


save all his ashes for me

by RaisingCaiin



Series: these half-healed gashes all over our love [1]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arranged Marriage, Cousin Incest, DID I MENTION THIS WAS AN AU?, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Incest, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Multi, Political Alliances, Politics, Unrequited Love, War, War of the Last Alliance, mentions of m/f first cousins
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-04 14:34:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12773091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisingCaiin/pseuds/RaisingCaiin
Summary: It was not that Elrond thought their battle plans would improve any further with waiting, or that he believed the remnants of the Noldor could afford to sit on their hands any longer now that Sauron had resurfaced in the south. It was not that Elrond was naive enough to imagine that the fallen Maia would be content with stealing his people's greatest minds and brightest lives; it was not that he was comfortable in any way with the Rings of Power, left to their uncertain care by the brilliant Celebrimbor before his untimely death.It certainly was not that Elrond could think of anyone better suited to helm their last push against Middle-earth's own evil than Ereinion, last - and to Elrond, greatest - of the High Kings of the Noldor east of the Sea.It was just that. . .Elrond had lived through one war already, as had all those around him: Ereinion, Erestor, Círdan, and, by all accounts, Círdan's mysterious guest. One war was enough, was it not?But if not now, then when? And if not them, then whom?





	1. a candle is lit, i see through him

Imladris had been founded in a sheltered valley at the very foot of the Hithaeglir, a towering range of mountains ever wreathed in mist, its upper peaks cool and white with snow even in the depths of summer. But for all that the valley was sheltered, its heart accessible by only the most hidden and well-guarded of passes, there were still days when Elrond felt exposed – seeing, or worse, _seen_ , through the barriers of sentry and stone alike. For no further than a week’s ride due south, following the course of the Bruinen, lay the smoldering wastes that remained of Eregion’s floodplains, and, rising above them like a ribcage half-unearthed from the dirt, loomed the charred ruins that had once formed the white walls of Ost-in-Edhil.

Elrond had chosen the site for this new city, his people’s haven, for the many points it offered in favor of their security – its depth sheltered them from the worst of the Mountains’ raging winters, its passes guarded them from unexpected foes, and with the Bruinen’s spring at their backs, they had a source of water that their enemy could not access, poison, or arrest. What was more, as Elrond had discovered quite by accident during the terrifying last days of the Dark Lord’s siege upon Imladris all those years ago, the Bruinen was also a source that responded with alacrity to the touch of Vilya.

He-of-the-Airs.

Elrond had not meant to do it. In any lesser straits, he would not have donned the Ring, which Ereinion had briefly mentioned that the youngest Fëanorian, Celebrimbor of Ost-in-Edhil, had died to keep secret and secure from their enemy – and that, supposedly, was connected in some way to that enemy Himself. Elrond had been told nothing more about the Ring than not to don it, and yet. . .

On that mad shining day during the war for Eriador when it had seemed that the Dark Lord’s creatures would overwhelm the defenders at the ford

– when no aid would reach Elrond’s people in their moment of need, when Imladris would have fallen as had Nargothrond and Gondolin before it, to flame and fury –

then Elrond had decided that he would chance whatever it was about this damn thing that had led Ereinion to warn him against donning it.

It had been – well. It had been successful, if nothing else.

Looking back now, though, Elrond could say with all the fervency of experience that he prayed he need never don that Ring of Power again. For from the instant when that shining circle of gold-and-blue slipped home on his finger, Vilya had come alive – yes, Elrond remained sure of his story, _alive_ – and whispered his name to him. A mad wind had whipped through the valley, screaming as it tore slates from roofs and children from paths; a shock like a blade had lanced across Elrond’s eyes and embedded itself point-first behind his temples, pain so crisp and clear that he could all but _see_ it. And in the wake of such unexpected fury was a silence that had cupped Elrond in its cold hands as though he were trapped beneath a bowl – he could not hear even Erestor beside him, pulling frantically at his arm – for what could have been a moment or an hour or a year of the Sun.

Then all hearing had come rushing back to him, but augmented, it seemed, by every current of air throughout the valley. Elrond had been able to hear everything, even from his place in the back of the valley – the screams of those unseated by the wind, the panic of horses, and, some hours’ hard ride away at the besieged ford, the terror and despair of his defenders as they struggled to protect both their fallen and the valley at their backs.

He has since been told that he screamed in turn. And that the Bruinen rose, and came thundering down along its course with several times its normal strength, in a white-capped dash of waves that swept away the Dark Lord’s filth.

All he has remembered since, though, is the second touch that he had then felt – scouring, as if Someone had brushed icy fingers across his brow – and in the span of a single breath, everything from surprise _there was not meant to be a Ring in this pitiful valley_ to interest _who art thou, little one, that seek to oppose Me?_ to intent _no matter, for thou art mine now all the same._

To what was probably their salvation, Erestor had been able to wrestle him down and pry Vilya from his finger before Elrond felt anymore, and in this Elrond was more than glad to follow his older kinsman’s lead and never speak of the occurrence again. Even when the jubilant survivors of the ford’s defenses had been relieved, and could return home, and spoke with such wonder and awe of their miraculous rescue, neither Erestor nor Elrond had offered any explanation of how the Bruinen might have risen so fortuitously, and the rest of Imladris was left to rejoice in Eru’s obvious favor of their cause.   

Similarly, Erestor never told him how many of Imladris’s own had perished in that flood. Even with the influx of refugees swept in before the Dark Lord’s forces, though, Elrond had always had a good idea of his people’s numbers– and comparing the surviving defenders against his own tally painted a sad picture indeed.

Without the valley’s natural advantages and that one mad instance, though, Elrond knew that his ragtag gathering of Lindon warriors and Eregion survivors and various innocents swept up in the retreat from burning Eriador would never have survived long enough for Ereinion’s and Tar-Ministir’s forces to reach them. As it had turned out, though, the Bruinen and Vilya had been enough to see Imladris’s few and flagging defenders through; those were already the last of the desperate years in which Ciryatur had led the might of Numenór’s navy to the aid of Ereinion and Círdan in Lindon, and then, the Battle of the Gwathló won, the three forces had fought their way east across Eriador to Elrond’s aid.

~ ~ ~

With a sigh, Elrond now leaned a little more heavily against the balcony railing, only half-watching the bustle of preparations in the courtyard below as his sight focused further inward. The most difficult part of remembering those harrowing years following the Dark Lord’s revelation in Eregion – and the even longer years of death and destruction that followed, as the dwindling remnants of the Noldor struggled to make and maintain ties with increasingly-wary allies – was not to be found in remembering the battles themselves, or even in the lists of the dead, soldiers and support staff alike. The true horror of it all lay in the destruction visited upon those who had played no part in the Dark Lord’s plans – the Green-Elves and the Men who had lived in Eriador and for their obstruction had been mown down before Sauron’s advancing troops, the creatures that had been unable to flee and so had fallen by the foot or blade of orcish invaders, and even the land itself, scourged and burned by both sides alike, much as Ereinion and Círdan’s man Hádhon had tried to limit their forces’ damages.  It had been a war that had to be fought, yes, but by the Valar, how Elrond had hated everything about it!

(He very deliberately did not think of another war, a greater one, that had done so much more and left so much worse – a War whose wrath had caused so much destruction that some were willing to accept any aid, any price, in their attempts to repair its ravages.)

And now, Elrond admitted to himself with another, heavier sigh as he leaned forward against the railing, they were preparing to do the same thing over again, like fools who had learned nothing from their lessons the last time. For, only some hundred years following His ignominious retreat back to Mordor, the Dark Lord had obviously decided to pay back not the Elves for his defeat, but instead the far more susceptible and forgetful race of Men, as embodied by Numenór. In hindsight, His plan was well-served by circumstance, for in that brief interim of peace Numenór’s kings had grown ever more shortsighted, more discontent, and more powerful – a dangerous combination that even Ereinion had had not the strength of heads or ships to truly address. And so the Dark Lord in His cunning, rather than targeting Ereinion or Círdan or Elrond, had gone directly for the throat of Numenór, challenging their holdings upon Middle-earth in a baited attempt to goad Ar-Pharazôn, that nation’s last and worst king. And this effort had succeeded spectacularly – Pharazôn had landed in Umbar, too far south for even a token resistance by Ereinion or Círdan, and had marched right up to the mouth of Mordor to take the Dark Lord prisoner, apparently never stopping to wonder how any of the Eruhini, no matter the size of their army, could imprison a Maia with neither struggle nor loss.

Predictably, Numenór had become embroiled in civil strife within three short years. Rather less predictably, the Dark Lord had succeeded to such a degree that Pharazôn in his new madness had actually dared to sail West in defiance and challenge of _the Valar themselves_. It was as if the Man had not seen the ruin that even the attendants of those Powers could wreak. . .

Except that no, of course he hadn’t. And, as little as Elrond could truly associate this greed-driven fool with his own long-lost brother, the willful shortsightedness exhibited by Pharazôn _did_ remind him of a certain young hothead who had once stood alongside Elrond and looked across the new wind-scoured wastelands of Beleriand before shaking his head, muttering how he’d have a thing or two to tell Eönwë if he ever met the Maia. . .  

In the aftermath of Pharazôn’s madness, though, it was hardly strange that none of those to whom Elrond had spoken since could say what had become of the last king of Numenór. However, according to an ongoing stream of messengers from Ereinion, a few dozen ships of shell-shocked survivors had landed in the north, claiming that the Isle of the Star had been swallowed by an enormous wave. More puzzling still, Círdan’s messengers had then joined the exchange, communicating their lord’s concern and dismay upon finding that the many paths West across the Sea had been sundered, and now only a single one remained open for travel. Whatever had happened in Numenór had fundamentally altered the course of the world.

Letters among the three leaders had grown increasingly pressed, and Ereinion in particular had sounded more exasperated by the line as he recounted the foundation of the self-titled “Two Kingdoms,” stewing as he watched the Númenórean exile Elendil claim and crown himself High King over substantial swathes of land on both sides of the Hithaeglir. Ereinion’s anger at the Man’s perceived presumptuousness – an anger that Elrond would not agree with via the written word, due to the paths their written correspondence traveled – had only just begun to dim when, not even a hundred years later, the Dark Lord had resurfaced in Mordor.

According to missives from Elendil, He had attacked and destroyed key fortifications upon a fortress in the south manned by the Man’s son Isildur. Upon further questioning Elendil had sworn up and down upon any authority his readers chose to name (Elrond had winced at this wording) that _yes of course he was sure_ that the attacker was the Dark Lord once more, for the violence had been focused upon a seedling descended of Numenór’s Nimloth – the tree that had borne His particular wrath not long before.

 _Apparently nothing can kill the bastard,_ Ereinion’s letter upon the occasion had read, a rather more informal acceptance of the Dark Lord’s continued existence than Elendil’s had been. _Mark me disappointed, kinsmen, that Ulmo or Ossë or Uinen can apparently raise the Sea to drown the blasphemy of bloody Numenór but can’t even manage to do something useful like wash away that Void-damned Ring!_

Neither Elrond, nor it seemed Círdan, had responded to this particular letter – some days more than others, it was apparent just how much of his foster father’s impetuosity and irreverence Ereinion had absorbed. Both, however, had answered the next letter, in which Ereinion had informed them that he was exercising his power as High King of the Noldor in Middle-earth to forge an alliance with Elendil as High King of the Exiled Realms upon Middle-earth, pledging their combined forces to eradicate the threat of Sauron in Mordor.  

Elrond could feel a rare headache, one of the few Mannish ailments he could still suffer, impending at the mere memory.

 _If Elendil wants one last alliance of Elves and Men to throw that Maia out on his ass_ , Ereinion had written, and Elrond could all but hear the glee behind both the words and the impunity with which his impulsive kinsman had known he could pen them, _then he can have one last alliance of Elves and Men to throw that Maia out on his ass! As long as this time, I told him, we also destroy that Valar-cursed Ring of his._

And although Círdan’s next letter, which had been marked to show it was a single copy rather than a facsimile of one being sent to Ereinion, had confirmed that he would of course honor this grand Last Alliance, Elrond had almost been able to hear the Harbormaster’s sighs between each word.

It was like a curse, Elrond mused, this ability to discern the writer’s tics within a letter.

~ ~ ~

Now, not two fortnights after that particular exchange, the advance guard of Ereinion’s great new combined forces had begun to arrive – the Elves of Forlindon marching up to the valley alongside the Men of the Two Kingdoms, Gondor and Arnor. They were numerous enough that, as their numbers continued to swell, Elrond had had Erestor begin arranging camps at the very same ford that Vilya had once saved, now a shallow crossing where the Bruinen’s banks marked the beginning of the ascent east into Imladris proper. Ereinion’s Last Alliance was apparently to be great enough that a single waystation, even one by now as established as Elrond’s Imladris, could not house them all.

Not that anyone would be able to tell there _wasn’t_ an entire army down there in the main courtyard, going by the sheer amount of noise rising below his window. The headache pressed a little more. 

“Copper for your thoughts, cousin!” said a cheery voice in his ear, and Elrond spun, a curse on his lips as his hand automatically reached for a sword that did not hang at his side while he was in Imladris.

“Blast your steps, couldn’t you walk a little more loudly?” The complaint was a little louder and more forlorn than he would usually use to address the High King of the Noldor in Middle-earth, but Elrond felt vindicated by the lack of onlookers – and the irritation that always stemmed from Ereinion having gotten the better of him.

“Suppose I could,” Ereinion mused, as if he were truly considering the merits of such a suggestion. “But then how would I test the vigilance of my newly-minted herald, eh?”

“That attitude will be the death of you someday,” Elrond groused, but he submitted to a rib-cracking, back-thumping embrace all the same. “And – ai, Gil, mind your grip! – this new herald is having second thoughts about the position, if his king is to begin their new venture by mistrusting him.”

 Stars, but it felt good to hear Ereinion’s full-chested chortle again! Ereinion held nothing back when he laughed, always imbuing the sound with all his considerable mirth, and Elrond had missed the sound these last centuries, having heard it only rarely since being sent forth from Lindon to establish a stronghold in Eriador. It hardly took much to captivate or distract the High King, as Ereinion had a whimsical sort of attention, but to hear that laughter now – and to know that he had been its cause – was more a balm to Elrond than he would have expected.   

Ereinion released him with a final slap between the shoulders. “By the sound of it, though, I suspect that this king – who sounds like a heartless fellow anyway, Elrond, why did you agree to this? – doesn’t much cares what his new herald thinks!” With this cheery mock admonition, he stepped around Elrond to look down upon the courtyard below his balcony. “Bloody mess, isn’t it?”

Elrond didn’t even need to look again to know what his king was seeing. The ruckus below was being caused by an enthusiastic inventory of Imladris’s available weapons, an activity that by this point had reached a tally of swords.

“A mess indeed,” he agreed ruefully. “And it will only get worse, as whatever number they eventually report, we will likely need to forge more. Gil, what numbers are you counting on, finally?”

“Eh, not really sure yet,” Erenion said ruefully, shrugging as he trailed Elrond back through his chambers and out into the hall – _like a pup_ , Elrond’s mind supplied, and he brushed the thought away with some irritation. “I’ve some fifteen thousand heads with me from Forlindon, wanted to check with you or your beloved pet gore-crow about getting them across the valley and on their way through the Hithaeglir, soon as possible – don’t imagine they’d all fit here too well, packed in tight and knocking elbows with your folk while we sort out final plans.”

Elrond nodded his agreement, ignoring the shot at the absent Erestor – much as his own seneschal and the High King always bickered, the jabs and rough words could not belie a strong mutual respect formed between them many years before Elrond had even met Ereinion.

“Faerveren will be leading them,” Ereinion continued, naming one of his own lieutenants, another veteran of the previous war against the Dark Lord. “She’ll take a half of the provisions we brought along with the advance guard, setting up waystations and patrols along the pass as she goes, so we’ll have half a supply route secured that way; through the pass, I’ve told her she’s to scout likely sites along the Anduin and find us a place to muster our little outing, so that each new march will expand our reach in the east further as they join her.”

And the Anduin itself would supply the rest of their supply route as they marched further south toward Mordor – it was a good plan, and Elrond huffed his approval. “I’m certain Erestor could draw up a schedule that will move your warriors through Imladris and into the mountains at a reasonable pace. Fifteen thousand though, you said? Gil, I hope you realize that Imladris cannot field nearly as many – we are still a single small settlement, and I will not leave the valley’s defenses utterly unmanned. I can promise six thousand, if that. How many heads have Elendil and Círdan?”

“Elendil counts some twelve thousand Men, and before we left Forlindon Círdan promised some fifteen or twenty of his own – now there’s a motley army for you, El, he’s bringing his own folk as well as some of the Sindar from the Blue Mountains!”

Ereinion’s glee at the thought of Círdan’s mixed army couldn’t hide his unawareness of their location, though – or Elrond’s growing sense of impending disaster. “Gil.”

“Mmmm?”

“Elendil and his Men are with you, then, but not Círdan?” That was one thing. “And we are to go against the Dark Lord in Mordor with some fifty-odd thousand forces?” That was entirely another. Though there was no way of knowing for sure just how many orcs and dark creatures had been bred and secreted beneath the smoke in the south, there would surely be far more than fifty thousand.

“Erm. . .” When Ereinion didn’t venture an answer, Elrond turned, only to see his kinsman shuffling his feet.

Oh. There were further pieces missing of Ereinion’s great Last Alliance puzzle missing then? “Gil.”

“Círdan said that he had received an odd message, something that would require his personal attention, before he could set out to meet us,” Ereinion admitted. “Likely only a few days behind us at this point, though.”

“Mmm.” That was strange, but not insurmountable. “And?”

“And. . .” Ereinion muttered something indistinguishable.

“Gil, so help me or I will set Erestor upon you myself.” The headache from earlier loomed ever more menacingly as the day went on.

“A couple of chaps from over east might have pledged their support,” Ereinion mumbled.

Ah, yes, headache fully arrived – ‘chaps from the east’ could mean anyone from Amdír of Laurelindórenan to Khalen of Rhun, adding anywhere from five thousand to thirty thousand further heads. “Gil-Galad Rodnor Ereinion, that didn’t seem like a pertinent fact to share with your stars-damned _herald_?”

“El, El, _El_!” Ereinion pleaded, following him down the stairs into the bright courtyard and weaving through the cheerful confusion with practiced ease, much to Elrond’s irritation. “The only reason I didn’t say anything sooner is because I knew you’d get all, all – like this!”

“Like what? And stars help you if you decide to use the word excitable,” Elrond warned, ducking down another set of stairs.

“Irritable, then,” Ereinion said agreeably, tripping down after him easily despite his relative inexperience with Imladris’s many twists and turns. “Look, El. This is precisely why I would have you, and not Círdan or Faer’ or Dínen, as herald. You have the most admirable way of plotting for every contingency, even those that you have only just learned of. Add to that, you and she and I and darling Erestor are among those few here who even remember what it meant to face-“

“Flattery will lead you nowhere,” Elrond interrupted, though of course it was – ehem, _pleasing_ – to know that his service during the last war had been seen and noted. “And you must also realize that as your herald, I should be serving as your voice amongst your allies, not fretting over whether your motley armies will be tripping over dull swords as they forage for enough to feed themselves.”

“Eh,” Ereinion said dismissively, ignoring the jab at the bright Forlindon colors, a combination of gold and turquoise that Elrond had always hated. “It seem you’ve discovered my reprehensible plot, El – I only appointed you herald because I need that uncle of yours as quartermaster, and Valar help the fool who does not realize that you two are a package deal!”

“Erestor would be most pleased by such an assessment,” Elrond said drily. “And don’t think that I haven’t noticed how you still haven’t said who your latest friends are, and how many of their own they have pledged to your grand Last Alliance.”

Ereinion shifted guiltily.

“You don’t actually know yet, do you,” Elrond realized with a sigh.

“I don’t,” Ereinion agreed ruefully. “Another of the many reasons why I need Faerveren on her merry way through these ugly mountains and stationed along the Anduin as soon as possible – it’d be much easier to pass messages along that way.”

“Meaning Laurelindórenan at the least then, yes?” Elrond probed. The Golden Wood, located two days’ ride south of the eastern passes, was a small kingdom, but well-fortified and long-practiced in standing against errant raiding parties from Mordor and the encroaching Brown Lands.

“Mm, well,” Ereinion hedged. “How many more bloody stairs are we going to climb, El?” He heaved an over-exaggerated sigh of mock relief as they descended into the lower courtyard where the stables had been built. “Finally, thank the Valar! Per the last I’d heard, though, yes, Laurelindórenan will join us, in at least some limited capacity. Dear aunt Artanis seems to think that she can persuade Amdír – cheerful sort even for a king, let me tell you – that an alliance with the Noldor would be to his benefit.”

“Mmmm.” Only half-listening to Ereinion now, Elrond motioned for Erestor, who was overseeing the catalogue of mounts alongside a captain of the High King’s party, to join them. “And you are able to exchange messages with Artanis at such tremendous speed how? I distinctly remember a recent complaint about needing Faerveren and her waystations to speed your letters.”

“Stars, I am a bloody fool,” Ereinion groaned, though this didn’t stop him from smacking Elrond on the arm when the Peredhel muttered his agreement. “I forgot you haven’t met her!” As Erestor came to join them, followed by the silver-haired captain, Ereinion made a show of seizing the captain’s hand and pressing it to his lips, before declaring: “Elrond, it is my privilege, nay, my distinct honor-“

“To get on with it?” Erestor offered, one distinctly unimpressed brow rising.

Too stunned to speak, Elrond could only look on in bewilderment as Ereinion harrumphed and the silver-haired captain laughed, pulling lightly at her hand in Ereinion’s grip.

“Let a body take pride in things upon occasion, could you, Gondolinhel?” the High King of all the Noldor in Middle-earth whined. “Stars above, but you _do_ like to ruin a moment. Fine, then. Elrond, it is my pleasure to introduce you to my betrothed, Celebrían Artaniel of Laurelindórenan, daughter of Artanis Arafinwiël. And ‘Rian, my treasure, this is the most dangerous of my kinsmen, Elrond Eärendilion – a smooth-tongued snake who takes the news of fifty-odd thousand heads as calmly as if they were just so many inconvenient houseguests. Do not believe a word he says of me, I beg you!”

Ereinion’s – betrothed?

As if from a distance, Elrond noticed that Artaniel’s grip was firm and sure as she took his hand in greeting. “It is most pleasing to finally meet you, Lord Eärendilion. The High King speaks very highly of you.” Her voice, too, was lower than typical and now tinged with amusement at Ereinion’s antics, much as anyone who had long known the High King might be. Had he borne in mind that Artanis’s mate Celeborn had silver hair, Elrond might have been able to guess who this smiling captain would be.

Not that Ereinion could have been snared by anyone less than another scion of Finwë’s line.  

Both Erestor and Artaniel were looking at him with some intent now, Elrond realized – and then, with a start, he dropped the captain’s hand, which he had likely been gripping over-long and over-tight. “It – it – the pleasure is mine, Lady Artaniel,” he managed, utterly unable to return the compliment of foreknowledge.

Erestor’s dark brow, initially fallen back to rest after putting Ereinion in his place, now rose again, accompanied by a highly pointed Look; Artaniel, obviously drawing upon some mistaken impression of Elrond’s being in distress, looked from her betrothed to his herald with something that appeared dangerously like dawning comprehension.

Ereinion, damn him for a, a – for a _something_ , a stars-benightedly savvy political mind perhaps – did not seem to notice a thing amiss. 

“If you can spare us a few mounts for the day, Gondolinhel, I should probably drag El out to meet the Númenóreans,” he told Erestor, going so far as to rub his hands together as if having just accomplished a particularly nerve-wracking task by introducing his betrothed to his herald.

“Certainly, my King,” Erestor said smoothly, already turning back toward the stable staff after one last pointed glance to assess Elrond’s state. “So long as they are encamped safely within the borders of the valley proper, that is?” At Ereinion’s impatient huff of acknowledgment, Erestor inclined his head, as if indicating that the High King of the Noldor in Middle-earth had his permission to leave with Erestor’s charge. Elrond would have been more irritated if he were not so – _distracted_. “Given their recent trials, though,” Erestor continued, “I do not imagine that your new Mannish allies will appreciate that particular title any longer.”

“If not Númenóreans, Gondolinhel, what _should_ we be calling them, eh?” Ereinion’s voice receded as he trailed after Erestor in the direction of the stables. “Men of the North? Already have those up in Forochel. Men of the West? Ulmo or Ossë or somebody seemed to have pretty strong feelings on _that_. Foredain? Dúnedain? Help a body out here, o wise one!”

While he could appreciate Erestor’s removing Ereinion before either made a further fool of themselves, Elrond was highly cognizant of the fact that this strategic decamping now left him facing Celebrían Artaniel, betrothed of the High King.

Alone. And after she had likely seen something of an old and painful truth upon his face.

Best – best limit the damages before they grew worse.

Even as the silver-haired captain drew breath to speak, then, Elrond forced himself to face her, to grit out some of the words that he had always denied even Erestor. “Lady, I – I do not know what it is you are thinking, but I – imagine that if you have your mother’s Sight in any capacity, this cannot appear well. But I promise to you, I – I will swear if I must –“ _Maglor forgive him_ “that your betrothed is pure. Ereinion is loyal, and true, and he would never have pledged himself to you if he did not intend to honor and uphold his end of that vow. He is untrammeled, and any liability you saw in me is all mine. He – he does not know.”

The concern upon Artaniel’s face was nearly as painful as Ereinion’s continuing obliviousness after all these years. The captain rather looked as though she wished to lay a comforting hand atop Elrond’s shaking arm.

It was intolerable.

Praise the Valar she refrained.

“Thank you for telling me,” she said only, instead. “It is never easy.”

 _Easy to do what,_ Elrond wondered with a sudden rush of seething anger. _To love in silence? Long for someone who will never see you as anything but a young friend to be mentored and teased? For it seems to me all of that is easy enough._

When Artaniel smiled, sadly, he remembered again – and too late – whose daughter she was, and what abilities she must have.

 _Far too easy_ , came a soft echo in his mind. _Admitting all this to another, though –_ that _is more difficult than most could imagine or bear._

Valar forfend. . .

Elrond bowed, stiffly, and walked after Erestor and Ereinion as quickly as possible without breaking into an outright run. He imagined he could feel Celebrían Artaniel’s gaze heavy upon his back the entire way.

From the look that Erestor gave him upon his rejoining them, Elrond would not be able to stave off the impending Conversation with his usual excuses.

And Ereinion, of course, was worse.

“Good of you to join us, El,” he said cheerfully. “And as heartwarming as it is to see you haven’t lost that protective streak yet – harassing ‘Rian, really?” Elrond’s heartbeat seemed to surge with a roar in his ears, but before Erestor could do more than lay a steadying hand at his shoulder, Ereinion was already continuing: “Promise, El, she’s not after me for just my good looks or the Noldor’s coffers or whatever it is that you were interrogating her about just now. She’s clever, that one, deft with counsel as she is with bow and blade, and nearly as charming as I am, to boot. Dear aunt Artanis thinks it’s a good match.”

“Of course she would, the meddlesome witch,” Erestor hissed. His fingers at Elrond’s shoulder clenched. “Still after a kingdom of her own then, I imagine? Your Majesty, I am surprised to hear that you would allow this degree of interference in your personal affairs.”

Elrond did not trust his self-control enough to voice agreement with his uncle’s assessment – if for an entirely different reason – but Erestor was certainly vehement enough for the both of them.

“Eh,” Ereinion concurred, with another of his signature shrugs. “Dear Erestor, it is heartening – heartening in the extreme! – to witness the depths of your concern for me, but I assure you that this once at least, distress is not actually necessary. I am fully aware of what my dear aunt is hoping for from this, ah, _affair_ , as you put it. As is ‘Rian.”

He stressed these last four syllables as if willing Erestor and Elrond to catch on to something through Artaniel’s apparent complicity, and shook his head in disgust when neither of them voiced some marvelous epiphany. “And yet you two are deemed wiser than I! Hmmph. All right, then – we have something of a pact, ‘Rian and I. So long as Artanis is focused upon us, and the prospects of getting her finger into Forlindon’s pies, we hope that she will not turn her designs upon Amdír or his poor son.”

“How will that-“ Erestor started, before seeing the obvious connection between Artanis’s eternal machinations and the ruling family of Laurelindórenan. “Oh. _Oh_. _Void_ and _stars –_ Eärendil, brother, grant me _patience_! But you do not think that she actually-?”

Neither he nor Elrond actually named Eregion, where Artanis had made her home and court outside Ost-in-Edhil, but the specters of those cold dead ruins, set to hellish flame and let burn to sterile ash by the Dark Lord, loomed all about this unexpected conversation. Elrond liked it less and less.

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Ereinion said grimly, and it was always something of a shock for Elrond to see such reminders that the High King was not all laughter and caprice, but also a shrewd ruler who had been dealing with his own somewhat duplicitous people since Elrond had been a toddler playing in the marshes of Sirion. “By all accounts – by which I mean ‘Rian again, who remembers something of both sides – Celebrimbor was ensnared rather tightly by his own doing and that Void-damned Maia, but her mother didn’t help the situation, always on about the City’s need for a dedicated ruler. She wouldn’t have colluded with the Dark Lord – Void, we’d all be dead and Middle-earth sunk like Beleriand if that had been the case – but she probably pushed Celebrimbor into making his play for leadership when the poor fellow would’ve just as happily stayed in his workshop tinkering with his toys. And we all know how well _that_ particular story ended. So. Soon as Elendil started making noise about an alliance, I asked ‘Rian if she could stand to be bonded to me, and she accepted with rather more graciousness than was actually my due, and here we are, withholding just enough information about our supposed dalliances from Artanis that Amdír _probably_ won’t wake up to find Amroth in open revolt or the fabric of Laurelindórenan collapsing about his ugly ears.”

A moment’s silence followed this speech before Erestor gave an unnecessary cough – the closest to approbation that Elrond had ever seen him give the High King. “Ah. That is – rather neat of you, Majesty.”

It was rather more brilliant than simply neat, Elrond was forced to conclude. In betrothing himself to Celebrían Artaniel, Ereinion had done more to secure his grand Last Alliance than would be gained even by sending advance forces out across the Hithaeglir. If Artaniel could in fact remember anything of her kinsman Celebrimbor’s disastrous dealings with Sauron from the time before Artanis dragged her family from Eregion – and if she was likewise on board with Ereinion’s plan to keep Artanis’ machinations focused safely away from the power structure of the Golden Wood – then Ereinion had gained both a powerful ally and an invaluable source of information, making his betrothal a judicious move indeed.

No matter who else it might have discomfited.

There was only one more problem. “Gil?”

Erestor, damn his solicitousness, perked up at the return of the long-standing diminutive, but Elrond ignored the hope for harmony rising in his seneschal’s eyes. 

“Mmmmm?” Ereinion was obviously only half-listening, too busy sizing up Imladris’s available mounts in search of a creature that could fulfill his eternal desire for speed.

Elrond struggled a moment with how to voice the other uneasy realization that Ereinion’s account had prompted. “Gil. Listen to me. _Gil_! Did – did Artanis receive from you a gift similar to that which you sent me?” Even here, in the very heart of Imladris, he dared not name Vilya, a Ring of Power.

Erestor’s eyes widened as he took in this new piece of the dilemma that was proving to be Ereinion’s Last Alliance. The High King himself, though, only paused in his perusal of their horses, turning to face Erestor and Elrond with a look of puzzlement upon his handsome face.

“The gift? That I sent you?” he asked, sounding honestly bewildered.

Valar. Either the High King’s liar’s face had improved considerably or the bloody Noldo truly had no idea what Elrond was asking. 

Erestor let loose the strangled remains of a sigh and rubbed discreetly at the first finger of his own right hand, where a Ring of Power might conceivably be worn if one were foolish enough to don it despite the sender’s warnings.

Finally, _finally_ Ereinion’s eyes widened in turn. “Ah. Of course.”

“Well?” Elrond pressed. That did not sound promising in the slightest. “An exclamation is not an answer, kinsman.”

“Mostly because my own lack of foresight can be bloody embarrassing, El!” Ereinion snapped.

It was that loss of temper, in an Elf whom Elrond had only seen display true anger or even discomfort in the most trying of situations, that ultimately spoke the truth.

“You did,” Elrond realized. Valar, this would complicate _everything_.

Erestor only groaned.

 “Yes, thank you, Erestor,” Ereinion said, a hint of stifled exhaustion winning out over the moment of anger. “The more I thought about it – the more I _learned_ about _them_ – you can bet your limp sac that I regretted doing it. In my defense, though, consider the timing. A missive arrives from Celebrimbor in the dead of night, telling me that his famous colleague is none other than fucking _Sauron_ and begging me for any spare troops I might have milling about because ‘do you know, cousin, we’re pretty sure he left only to gather an invasion force’.” Elrond had never actually met the much-reviled Celebrimbor before that Noldo’s gruesome death, but by Erestor’s half-approving wince, Ereinion’s deepened tone was meant to be an impression of the youngest Fëanorian.

“Oh and yes, by the by,” Ereinion continued, still in his apparent imitation of Celebrimbor, “‘here are some _magic fucking rings_ that the aforementioned _fucking Sauron_ must never lay hands on, can you make sure it _fucking stays that way_?’ ”

Oh.

For all that he himself had been a high-ranking member of the court of Lindon, Elrond had not realized that this was how Ereinion had received the news of Eregion’s incipient demise. At the time, the High King had only gathered his closest advisors together and, without fanfare, broken the news that Sauron himself had resurfaced in Ost-in-Edhil. Ereinion had then focused their efforts and attention on the fact that only the combined might of Lindon and Numenór could possibly combat such a powerful enemy, and in the ensuing uproar, nothing more had been asked of the missive that actually brought them such terrible and unexpected news.

Well. That, and then too, Elrond had only received the Ring of Air years later, after Ereinion’s forces had arrived too late to save Ost-in-Edhil or its people, and Elrond himself had been tasked with the foundation of a safe haven on the outskirts of beleaguered Eriador. And even when sending It to him, Ereinion had said very little of the device Itself – nothing of Its construction, nothing of Its abilities, and certainly nothing of Its place among a numbered series.

Most likely, Elrond was coming to realize, because Ereinion himself had not known these things either. 

But in that mad shining moment raising the Bruinen so many years ago, Elrond had Seen as much – there was more than one Ring. Ereinion, if Celebrimbor had indeed sent Them to him, must have entrusted the others to, well, others. And, during a moment of crisis – who better, more proficient, more strong-willed, than Artanis lately-of-Eregion?

Erestor, who of course had known even less of all this than Elrond, sighed. “And Artanis seemed a safe option for something so volatile, Majesty?” His uncle was the only one Elrond knew who could make the high title sound like a rebuke.

Ereinion snorted again, turning back toward the stabled horses as if in pretense that they were more interesting than this conversation. “Keep in mind, Gondolinhel, that at the time I knew neither the extent nor the results of her interference in Ost-in-Edhil’s affairs. So, really, it looked as though _she_ was the sane one, for clearing out before shit went down. And I dared not keep them all.”

And again, with this unsettling new habit of blindsiding revelations! So there _did_ exist more than one of the perilous devices now nestled so innocuously upon a string at Elrond’s breast, perched between two layers of robes. . . Elrond had already known this, but Ereinion could not have known that he knew, and Erestor certainly had not.

What was it about these damned _Rings_? 

Unsurprisingly, Erestor hardly took this news well. “And you couldn’t have kept it yourself?” he hissed. He might have meant the Ring that Artanis had apparently been given, or perhaps the one that Elrond still had – knowing him and his extensive grievances with Fëanor’s line, he could have even meant the whole issue of cursed jewelry. But Elrond could almost see the instant when the older elf’s much-vaunted logic and aplomb finally caught up with his protective streak – Erestor straightened, slightly more composed, as he realized the likely answer to his own question: of course Ereinion could hardly have kept the Ring (Rings?), if he was the nominal leader of the offense against their prime enemy.

This did not keep Erestor from gesturing in futile annoyance, though. “Ai – never mind, never mind! But it seems high time that you told us exactly what we are dealing with in this thing – or, as it seems I should say, these _things_.”

 “It is indeed,” Ereinion agreed, his sights never turning back from surveying Imladris’s available mounts. He sighed. “But later, eh? Let’s get Elrond to meet his long-lost great-great-to-the-twenty-oddth-power grand-nephews first, and make sure that we can work with these Men. Then, I promise, you two can haul my protesting ass into some suitably dark corner where the walls don’t have ears to overhear you dragging me over the coals for all the things I should have done instead. Fair enough?”

He didn’t wait to hear their answers, and instead strode away calling for one of the stablehands to saddle a tall black stallion. But perhaps this departure was for the best, as Erestor seemed unable to restrain himself from murmuring “Well, perhaps not _all_ the things you should have done.”

He did not even look back to the silver-haired captain Celebrían Artaniel as he said it, but Elrond knew precisely what his uncle meant. Erestor was too canny an observer not to have noticed the futile torch Elrond had carried for the High King all these years, no matter how much pain and effort had gone into Elrond’s own attempts to douse that torch.

And now, when it was all far too late anyway, Elrond found himself too exhausted to deal with his uncle’s outrage on his behalf. Especially when Ereinion truly had done nothing wrong. “Erestor, please – let it lie. We have far more pressing concerns, and you must realize that Ereinion is not the one to blame for my childish infatuations.”

He only realized his error when Erestor’s face hardened, as it always did upon such inadvertent reminders that Erestor himself had lost so much of that childhood to Fëanor’s eldest sons. Damn it all. “Nothing is more important to me than your happiness, nephew,” Erestor said harshly. “Nothing. Likewise, there is nothing I would not do to secure it for you.”

Elrond sighed, passing a hand before his face as Erestor turned to call for the stablehands to bring another horse and Ereinion shouted at them both to hurry up, they might have fifty years to idle away talking but the Númenóreans didn’t!


	2. the poison still runs its course through him

Though _of course_ Ereinion would ask about Erestor’s grim mood.

Only once they actually ridden out of hearing range of the vaunted seneschal of Imladris, though. “Dare I ask how you managed to flap the unflappable?”  

“I hardly know why you pretend to inquire when it seems that you dare all you like,” Elrond muttered, striving to ignore the High King. But Ereinion tsked this off easily, nudging his mount to walk alongside Elrond’s as they left the lower courtyard.

“Your gore-crow I can take being angry at me, El, but not you too,” he wheedled. “I hardly even know what I have done! Unless – was it ‘Rian? Is Erestor madly jealous of her? Oooh, am I to be the fulcrum of an entanglement that shall be the stuff of song?”

It took all his will to ignore Ereinion’s flippancy, painful in its near accuracy, but somehow Elrond found it in himself to try and steer the conversation toward if not safer, then at least more productive waters. “I suspect Erestor’s anger had more to do with his sudden realization of how remarkably little he knows of the, ehm, gift you entrusted to me.”

“Ah.” Ereinion fidgeted atop his mount.

They rode with only three guards, two of Forlindon and one of Imladris, as their current path stayed well within the valley itself, but still. It was clear that Ereinion still deemed it unsafe to discuss the Ring – or Rings, Elrond supposed he had best start saying – of Power even among such a small and trusted company.

But at least Ereinion seemed to realize that this left the onus of starting a better conversation up to him. “All jests aside, El – what think you of ‘Rian?’

Unfortunately, it also seemed that _somehow the High King thought of pestering Elrond about his own betrothal_ _as_ _a better conversation_.

Valar. . .

Elrond spurred his horse to just a slightly quicker walk, and if the move left Ereinion somewhat behind him, well. Merely a coincidence. “Seeing as I do not know her in the slightest, my king, I am hardly the best positioned to judge the match.”

Ereinion only spurred his own mount forward to match the new pace. “Ooooh, all hail the return of Eärendilion the Prissy! Do you know, El, that you get all funny when you are angry but would rather we couldn’t tell? Your sentences expand and your addresses sit up and learn manners! Disconcertingly Erestor-ish of you – well, maybe not, that princely Gondolinhel swallowed a lexicon as a babe and never quite managed to cough it back up – but also decidedly less impressive on you than on him. And I will not be distracted from my question, o herald!”

Oh yes he could, and he would. All it ever took was the right distraction.

Even in this, Elrond could almost find himself heartened by how well he yet knew the High King.

“Hmmph. What I think of the lady Artaniel is decidedly less important than what your court thinks of her, I imagine.”  

Well. As changes of topic went it hardly came out as smoothly as Elrond had intended it, but bless his spirit if Ereinion didn’t rise to the bait all the same. “What kind of rake do you imagine I am, Eärendilion? Promising myself heart and soul to the lady while measuring approval ratings behind her back? Do you really think so little of me?”

Perhaps it was the idea of Ereinion promising himself heart and soul that goaded Elrond more than it should have, but – Valar, at any rate he hadn’t acted out like this since first coming to Ereinion’s court. “And yet. You affianced her for nothing more than the political opportunities she embodies, sire.”

 “Damn your eyes, El!” Ereinion spurred the black stallion a little faster still, overtaking Elrond and wheeling his mount about so that he was facing him. “My king? Sire? What in the void has come over you today, kinsman?”

Facing a confused and frustrated Ereinion did nothing to soothe Elrond’s own turmoil, but by some miracle his voice remained steady and even. “Some slight confusion, I admit. Whatever has become of your advice that instinct speaks with a better voice than calculation?”

It was another low blow, worse even than bringing up the pit of vipers that was Lindon’s court, for this had been Ereinion’s advice to Elrond and his brother when the twins had come to him after the end of the Great War, both near in tears and struggling with Elros’s desire to embrace mortality. Ereinion had looked from one to the other and said simply that Elros must have his own reasons for wishing to shoulder the Gift of Men. Instinct usually said something that calculation lost, he had told them, and it was always best to hear both arguments first.  

And by Ereinion’s wince now, centuries after Elros’s death, Elrond knew that the dart had sunk home.  

Ereinion had never said in so many words, but, later faced with the reality of Elros as the Man-King of Numenór – christened and crowned, enrobed and entombed – he had seemed at times to double-guess the wisdom of his own advice.  

So to have it thrown back in his face now. . .

“You never did pull your punches when riled.” Ereinion wheeled the black stallion back around, and their little cavalcade started on its way again, the three guards straining to pretend that they hadn’t just witnessed this little spat. “As the Gondolinhel isn’t currently with us, El, I’ll tell you something for free – that Fëanorian upbringing of yours is showing. Might want to tuck it back in your breeches now – we’ll all acknowledge that yours is the biggest.”

The silence that then descended was louder than it should have been, despite the tattoo of their horses’ hooves upon the road down into the lower half of the valley.

It was the desperate quality of it all that eventually prompted Elrond to speak again.

Rather than any actual regret for making Ereinion think twice about this betrothal, of course.

“I just worry for you, Gil.” _A fair enough beginning_. “Whatever the truth of it, a marriage is seen as an inviolable bond, and no one – not Artanis, not your own advisors – will ever let you forget this, should your heart later change.” _Dangerously close to swerving off-topic now_. “And, having only just met Artaniel, I have no way of knowing whether you – as a thinking, feeling individual beyond your image as our king – will be fulfilled in this particular alliance.” _Valar, just stop speaking, Elrond. . ._ “You know that I care for you, kinsman” _more than you will ever know_ “and I fear that you may be making a decision you will regret.”

“O- _ho_ , and that concern that gives you the right to shit all over me for making my own choices?” But Ereinion’s mood already seemed to be lifting – never one long for gloom, the High King! Findekáno Nolofinwëan had perished long before Elrond was even born, but those who had known Ereinion’s foster father all swore that this trait of Ereinion’s could have been inherited direct. “El, I don’t think I’ve known such venom from that sweet mouth of yours since I first met you as a wild cub straight from the Fëanorians’ tender graces. Are you sure that that little production was actually concern? Concern for me? _My_ guess is that it was a byproduct of the wasp you must have swallowed with your luncheon. Came with the stung face and everything.”

Sweet – _mouth_? Valar, but Ereinion could make being around him _bloody_ _impossible_.

But a smothered snort of laughter escaped before Elrond could do a blasted thing about it, and the High King of all the Noldor in Middle-earth beamed and beamed as though he had accomplished some great feat.

Damn him and his easy forgiveness, his ready laugh, that astonishing grin – even his willingness to finally, _finally_ drop the topic that Elrond really would rather not have touched with a twelve-foot pole. 

Damn him and damn Celebrían Artaniel!

“You have something there though, Gil.” The admittance lodged itself in his heart like a tangible weight and the accompanying pain, but Elrond owed Ereinion – his best friend, his kinsman, his lord and his king – this much at least. “I do not know her, but you do, and I ought to trust that you know your own judgment – your own heart, your own mind – better than I could presume to do.”

If anything, Ereinion’s grin shone the brighter still for such an affirmation. “That was downright sappy of you, El – damned proud to see you swallowing some bile and admitting to an emotion, every now and again! Why, if we weren’t all on horseback and liable to fall, I would reward such an obvious effort with an equally heartfelt embrace. But as we are, I will not, and instead we should start pretending that we are ready to ride out to war again. Dammit, kinsman, somehow I thought we might have earned ourselves at least a few centuries’ peace this time! Speak of the fallen Maia – shall we talk about the Númenóreans?”

“Anything to spare us all from your idea of sentiment,” Elrond groused, and with that the conversation fell into familiar, well-worn tracks – Ereinion teasing on the limits of a half-Mannish memory, Elrond wondering whether an elf of such uncertain lineage as Ereinion himself truly had any room to be casting aspersions upon others. From anyone else – and _to_ anyone else, going by the alarmed looks being exchanged among their guards – such words could be taken as insults with the power to start blood feuds: Elrond’s peredhel lineage and Ereinion’s potential bastardry had always been causes for others to question their leadership capacities. What these guards would not know, though, was that the similarities of experience had long been a subject of solidarity and mirth between the High King and his herald.

_Another way in which Artaniel might never understand the High King as he deserved, for all that Elrond supposed she *was* half Sinda and half Noldo, and therefore could not be entirely unaware of the challenges facing those of less than pure heritage in the eyes of Lindon’s court. . ._

All things told, Elrond reflected as they finally approached the camp of the Númenórean exiles, it was almost as if he himself had not spoken so ill of Ereinion in the one way that did matter, not half an hour past.  Almost as if he had not thrown an unmerited kindness from long ago back into the face of a friend he held dear above all else.

Almost. 

For even if Ereinion had found it within himself to forgive Elrond an ill-gotten accusation made from the jealous depths of a hidden heart, it seemed that the Valar – or perhaps fate, or even Elrond’s own benighted conscience – had not.

For how could either of them ever forget that the Men of Numenór were descended of that long-lost brother whom Elrond had just blasted the High King about?

By unspoken agreement, they pulled their horses to a halt atop the crest of a hill just overlooking the camp of the Númenórean exiles. From this distance, it was possible – not easy, but possible – to envision the Men scurrying about below as just that – just Men. Simply the representatives of yet another kingdom, another tribe, another people with whom bread must be broken, customs explained, and the outlines of a treaty brokered with the understanding that the whole process would begin again anew in another hundred years’ time, as the leader they had just come to know died and a new stranger ascended to take his place.

But that objective distance was so much more difficult to maintain when those that they watched were not just Men, but instead, Men descended of one particular Man who had meant so much to them both.  

Losing Elros – and knowing that this loss was forever – had been painful enough. Elrond had never dared bequeath quite so much of his love and affection to any of his brother’s heirs – or their children and theirs – when he knew that he would only lose them too, and in more and more rapid succession as their elvish blood grew more diluted, their elvish lifespans further diminished, by the generation.

For Elrond and the High King and their bemused guards were not quite so far above the camp that the distance could truly compromise the range of elven sight, and thus – below them Elros lived on, in some thousand Men who were not him and yet would also share his fate. Would die, and, in leaving this world for whatever new one Eru had promised them, would also leave their distant kinsmen behind.

No matter that this was the camp of Elendil, formerly of the Isle of the Star and now of the Two Kingdoms – no matter that some hundreds and hundreds of years had passed in the interim. To Elrond, watching and listening with a sore heart, it was Elros’s voice that sounded in the camp beneath them, magnified in its hundred minute permutations – Elros’s silhouette that walked again, heightened by its distribution among a thousand individual transformations.

And by the glint that Elrond spotted in the High King’s eyes before Ereinion lifted a hand to dash it away, the reminder of Elros was no less difficult for him. For all that he had come to know these Men, had marched in with them even, Elrond’s charge had rent a fresh and unwarranted gash across Ereinion’s spirit by accusing him of being the one to make Elros mortal.

As if Elros were not capable of such a choice himself, or Ereinion had actually been the deciding factor in that choice.

As if Elrond had had any reason to even make such an accusation, beyond his own childish frustration with a childish crush unrequited.

By the Valar, Elrond did not deserve to know such a giving spirit as Ereinion – much less serve him, much less love him.

“My King-” he began, but Ereinion, not even looking at him, raised his hand in a plea for silence before Elrond could finish his sentence, the most inadequate of apologies ever attempted. _I dare not even ask that you forgive me my unguarded tongue, but. . ._

“Please, El – save your remonstrances a time, eh? Put them on the tally alongside my failure to deal with Celebrimbor’s legacy and my overt dependence on the undependable Artanis, and I’ll let you have at me for all of it later, all right?” And he spurred his great black stallion away toward the camp below before Elrond could even draw breath to protest that this was not what he had meant at all.

Valar forgive him.

 

~ ~ ~

The unsettling feeling of seeing his dead brother in every Man’s face, of hearing his dead brother in every Man’s voice, only worsened when Elrond and their honor guard finally caught up with Ereinion in the midst of the Númenórean exiles’ camp. For although he could dismiss the sensation as a fantasy for most of the Men of the Two Kingdoms, Elrond could not do so quite as easily for those whose blood stemmed direct from Elros – Men such as Elendil himself.

Elendil, who, when he came striding from what must be his temporary command center at the calls of his flustered sentries, looked like nothing so much as an older Elros, with a cheerful temperament graven upon his face in lines of laughter, his chin half-cloaked by some affectation of facial hair, and his temples touched with the frost of age and impending death.

Ereinion, already dismounting and striding forward to meet the Mannish king, did not even falter, but Elrond knew with a pang that the High King must be seeing their ally with new eyes after Elrond’s unwarranted accusation.

“Hail and well-met!” the Man shouted, striding forward with great loping steps. Even amidst the clamor of war preparations, his booming voice – obviously trained to carry across wind- and storm-swept decks – was startling in the peaceful sanctuary of Imladris, and even the horses, Noldo-trained as they were, started at the sound of it. And yet.

Oh, Valar.

Elendil sounded just as Elros had, once – great-hearted and jovial and keen, ever eager to do whatever must be done – and Elrond found himself almost paralyzed with the shock of it.

Absurdly, he also found himself wishing that Erestor was here to help him bear it, but immediately banished the thought as quickly as it had come. Erestor would have found the reminders of Elros no less painful than Ereinion or even Elrond himself, and almost certainly would have made Elrond’s accusation of Ereinion worse, no matter which of the two he actually sided with. _He would have sided with Elrond._ Erestor was – to put it mildly – not known for retaining his famed aloofness where the sons of either Eärendil or Fëanor were involved.

Ereinion, in the meantime, had all but collided head-on with the Man who could have been Elros.

“ _Well-met_ my ass, you rascal!” the High King of all the Noldor in Middle-earth shouted in return to the High King of the Two Kingdoms in Exile, mimicking the distinctive accent of Numenór upon the first words even as the two rulers clasped arms, embraced, and slapped one another’s shoulders in the Mannish fashion. “Call me a decrepit specimen if you will, but I seem to remember marching in together just this morn?”

He had no room to be jealous of the familiar gesture, Elrond reasoned as he finally recollected enough self-possession to dismount and join them. It would be unreasonable to wonder how and when Ereinion had set aside the frustration of his past letters, more unreasonable still to expect that he was the only one Ereinion would ever greet with such an embrace.

“What if I didn’t mean to greet you, though, Ereinion?” the Man was asking, still laughing, when Elrond reached them and paused, uncertain of his next move, some distance away. “What if I had hoped to create a good first impression on your scandalized aide de camp?”

Elendil meant him, Elrond realized with distant surprise. Did he – did he truly look so disapproving?

Ereinion roared with laughter in his turn, maintaining his grip upon the Man’s arm even as he turned seeking the rest of his own small party. Spying Elrond hovering in wait of some signal, Ereinion waved him forward without ceremony.

“Valar, you scamp, I hope by that you don’t mean Elrond,” he was telling Elendil, still laughing, as Elrond finally took the last few steps needed to come and stand beside him. “Aide de camp, my ass – this is the Noldo we’re lucky enough to have running our mad little venture. El!” He turned again toward Elrond, only to seem to recall that he thought Elrond angry with him about Elros’s fate, and – oh, but it stung to watch his face fall at the imagined resentment.

Elrond could all but _see_ Elendil registering the shift of mood and wondering whether he had done ought to provoke it.

He could not let Ereinion think that he was at fault for Elrond’s own selfish heart, or let the High King’s plans for a grand Last Alliance waver on that slightest and most senseless of cracks.

Dammit, Elrond. _Could you not have held yourself together for a single day in the face of a friend whom you had actually hoped to impress with your abilities?_

He would have to take a page from his uncle’s book, then, and pretend that this friendly borderline-antagonism was the usual tenor of his relationship with the High King.

“I am right here, my king,” he said quietly, but leaving no doubt that the word conjured associations of support as much as physical space. And then, to match what little he had already seen of Elendil’s preferred communication style: “No need to shout, quite yet.”

After a heart-stopping pause – and with heart-breaking slowness, given its usual speed and confidence – Ereinion’s grin returned. “That you are, my herald – that you are. Anyway. El! Would you do me the enormous favor of offering this ugly lump a civil greeting?”

Elendil’s resemblance to Elros did not diminish with the strength of his handshake, and the headache that Elrond had fondly imagined banished earlier now threatened to return in full force once more.

“Lord Elrond, was it?” the King of the Two Kingdoms in Exile asked courteously, shoving half-seriously at Ereinion’s smothering arm. “It _is_ a pleasure to meet you, whatever this one would have you believe.”

Too much of Artaniel’s earlier greeting now echoed in Elendil’s for Elrond’s comfort. Did – did Ereinion speak of him so fondly to all that he met?

 “The pleasure is mine.” Unsure of this particular alliance’s standing, Elrond determined to keep his replies simple until he gained a better understanding of the situation – Ereinion’s evident and irreverent familiarity made it difficult to determine an address for Elendil, especially given the High King’s earlier frustration at the Man’s claims to the North.

But Elendil seemed more curious than potentially offended at the simple response. “Forgive me for saying so, my lord, but you seem familiar to me, though I have met precious few of your people other than this one.” He shoved again, ineffectually, at Ereinion.

“As well he should,” Ereinion said, in what passed for a quiet voice in an elf of his exuberance. Elrond, startled by the sudden shift and cognizant too late of where this was going, found himself mightily tempted to slap a hand over the High King’s mouth. But he knew not what Elendil would think of such precocious treatment between liege and vassal, and so he refrained.

And so Ereinion said it. “His brother founded your kingdom, man!”

There was silence for half a heartbeat as Elendil tried, and failed, to reconcile this claim with the Two Kingdoms in Exile. Then there was silence for half a heartbeat more as he realized that Ereinion meant an older kingdom, Numenór.

In the end, it was a full heartbeat passed in silent, unconscious tribute to Elrond’s lost brother.  

And stars, but Elendil with his eyes wide and his brows raised looked as inquisitive as Elros had when pursuing some new curiosity, whether that of their lineage or the battlefield or the Gift of Men.

“By Eärendil’s star,” the Man finally breathed, and in his voice too Elrond’s brother lived on. “Forgive me such a lapse, my lord, but – you are the brother of Tar-Minyatur? By the Powers, that I should live to see such a day – I am blessed in making your acquaintance!”

Elrond knew that he should laugh off such reverence – he had neither earned nor deserved it, and surely Ereinion could not afford any awkwardness among such new and tenuous allies – but the huff that escaped his lips sounded forced, even to him. “It is easily made stranger still, if you like, for you have just sworn by my father.”

Ereinion, at Elrond’s side, snorted – likely amused by all the awkwardness and the awe, terrible creature that he was – but Elendil’s brow only furrowed once more.

Then his eyes widened further still as he realized that he had invoked Eärendil.

The Man’s deep, fiery blush was also all Elros, and Elrond found himself harboring a soul-deep need to flee back to the upper part of the valley.

“Legends are proven true and walk among us, then, my lord,” Elendil murmured, and Elrond cursed himself for inadvertently encouraging such awe. “Never before has the age of Elves been made so clear to me as it has this day!”

With one last slap to Elendil’s shoulder, Ereinion scoffed and stepped around them both.

 “By the Valar, you two make me feel ancient,” the High King of all the Noldor in Middle-earth complained. With a sudden intake of breath Elendil swiveled about to survey him too, probably just becoming aware of his relative age for the first time, but Ereinion confounded the attempt with a two-handed gesture of such breath-taking obscenity that their guards and the gathering crowd gasped, and Elendil bellowed with laughter.

“Enough already, ugh!” Ereinion continued, motioning for Elendil to lead them on toward the temporary command center. “Drinks first, drinks second, and then maybe some logistics if we’re unlucky enough to remain sober afterwards. Elendil, you ape, is it too much to hope for some of that brain-searing rotgut you served up the other night?”

“If you persist in calling the last-ever cask of Anadûnêan cider ‘rotgut,’ spoiled _eledâim,_ I see no reason why it should be wasted on you,” Elendil returned, shoving again at the High King’s shoulder as he strode past him and on toward the large tent ahead. But the return of Ereinion’s habitual irreverence seemed to have worked its usual enchantment, as the Men of the Two Kingdoms fell back into more of the ease with which the elves had been greeted before Elrond’s kinship to them was revealed.

And, if at times throughout the following meeting – where, to Ereinion’s noisy dismay, only a single round of drinks preceded their discussion of how the Men of the Two Kingdoms in Exile fit into his grand Last Alliance – Elendil’s eyes returned to Elrond, some of that initial awe creeping back into his face. . .

Well, then.

In the coming days Elrond would have to do his best to redirect that adulation where it belonged – with Ereinion, or with their great joint enterprise to rid these shores of the fallen Maia whose machinations had so gutted all their peoples.

Anywhere other than with Elrond himself.

 

~ ~ ~

But awkwardness was no way to prepare for war, so Elrond did his best to let his unsettlement with Elendil lie, rather than rule his mind. He made quiet arrangements for Erestor to be kept well away from the Men of the Two Kingdoms and Ereinion’s second lieutenant Dinen to liaise with them regarding any lesser needs, and that was that. Otherwise, he got on with the tedious business needed to ensure that Ereinion’s forces would be kept fed, sheltered, alert, and alive on their way to defeat a fallen god.

And the days passed swiftly enough, when he let them.

The existence of Celebrían Artaniel and the troth that Ereinion had pledged to her grew no easier to bear, but Elrond quickly learned that he must either leave it be or else gain no rest. It helped, though, that they hardly behaved as lovers, but as lord and diplomat in public, great friends in private.

The tally of weapons that had so consumed the morn of Ereinion’s arrival did end up as woefully short as predicted, and so the forges clamored day and night to build up their stock. But Elrond would brook no censure of the craftsfolk who had come to Imladris by way of fallen Eregion, some of whom could no longer enter a forge or even look upon a fire. Instead he rebuked those who would criticize them – even Ereinion’s few wry comments were not spared his anger – and found other ways in which those thus burdened by memory might contribute to the war effort.

And Ereinion’s lieutenant Faerveren was dispatched upon her way across the Hithaeglir, to begin the first advances of the Noldor east of the mountains, while Elrond directed their efforts toward what needed to be done and Erestor made masterful work of the records and correspondences ensuring that Elrond’s decrees were made so.

And Ereinion himself? The High King of all the Noldor in Middle-earth flitted from enterprise to enterprise, meeting with the craftsfolk and laborers and common soldiers upon whom his Last Alliance truly rested, always available for a drink or a commiseration or a slap on the back. He even made a practice of riding the first part of the way up the pass into the Hithaeglir alongside each new contingent of troops sent to join Faerveren’s growing camps.

Elrond could accept that this was Ereinion’s way of making himself known and trusted among his motley command – the warriors of Forlindon already knew him, but the Men of the two Kingdoms and the few warriors of Imaldris did not, and any beyond the courts or the armies would know of him even less. And even Elrond had to admit that Ereinion’s hands-on approach seemed to work – morale in the valley remained high despite small tensions and mishaps, such as an Eregion survivor’s losing his composure and screaming at the Númenórean camp for arriving too late to succor Ost-in-Edhil’s beloved lord, or Erestor, an elf of utter sobriety in every way, somehow forgetting that a part of the budget allocation was required for drink if one intended one’s armies – elven or otherwise – not to riot.

But Ereinion’s mobility and his disappearances among the folk scattered across the valley and the pass did mean that Elrond was left working with Dinen, and Elendil, and Artaniel, rather more than he would have preferred.

And of course, it was during one of the High King’s absences up the pass that news finally reached the valley of Círdan’s impending arrival with the fourth of the forces committed thus far to Ereinion’s Last Alliance.

As also arrived a winded messenger of the Falathrim, obviously sent with all available speed just ahead of his lord, dropping to Elrond’s feet and pleading for an audience in which to address an issue whose resolution could not be delayed.

Sighing, Elrond had Erestor send for Artaniel and the messenger scamper back to Círdan with the promise that yes, he supposed they could hear the old elf out.

Not in quite so many words, of course, but given Círdan’s tendency towards the slightly dramatic and his own over-full schedule of tasks to accomplish in preparation for war, Elrond was sorely tempted. 

 

~ ~ ~

When Elrond and Erestor were eventually able to make their way to Elrond’s study, though – where they found that the harbormaster of Harlindon had already been escorted to await them – Círdan dropped the issue into their very laps with no preamble whatsoever. “We have been sent an emissary out of the West.”

Fewer statements could possibly have been calculated to strike such cold foreboding into the hearts of any who had seen, or met, or even heard of the fallen god that had once called itself Annatar.

A number that, as evidenced by the sudden silence that descended upon the study, included Elrond himself as well as both Erestor and Círdan, and, if she ever got her delicate self in gear to join them, Artaniel.

Hardly surprisingly, it was Erestor who recovered first and attacked with his usual swiftness. “Harbormaster, this cannot be a new ploy, to have taken you in thus.” 

Círdan, sighing as if greatly put-upon, countered before Elrond could intervene. “Master Erukáno, is it my age or my experience that leaves you deeming me unable to make so simple a connection?”

This, Elrond realized with a start as Erestor visibly seethed, must be his uncle’s father-name. He had never heard it named or invoked before, and, as its roots belied Erestor’s largely-forgotten ancestry in all its perilous splendor, he now knew why. 

“I would be obliged if you controlled your tongue, Harbormaster,” Erestor returned, a dangerous tone in his voice unlike any that Elrond had ever heard from him. “I am obliged to you for the past care you have shown my nephews and our High King both, but not so far indebted that I will accept you parading my shame before them in a poor attempt to control me.”

Círdan had always been a difficult elf for Elrond to read – a combination of his great lifespan, having seen a full Age of the world more than Elrond had, and a naturally inscrutable countenance. Both, it seemed, were now being used to great effect upon Erestor, who so rarely these days encountered any older than himself.

“There is no shame in that name, Master Seneschal, and the day may yet come when you shall have to face this fact head-on.” With this masterful conclusion – placating enough that Erestor could not complain, while still inflammatory in its dismissal of his fears and vexatious in its foreboding of future trials – Círdan turned to Elrond. “As his herald, Master Eärendilion, are you qualified to speak for the High King?”

Elrond had never attached much value to his lordly titles, and indeed had always insisted upon more informality when among familiar company, but Círdan’s consistent use of an address that highlighted his lesser age had never become anything less than remarkably irritating. “I imagine that I am, Harbormaster, and also that Ereinion would tell you the same, were he here.”

“But he is not, and you are, and I must be sure,” Círdan pressed, and it seemed that he would have continued on in this vein for some time more if not for the sudden intrusion of a fourth voice from a darker corner of Elrond’s study.

“Peace, Lord Nowë. I am quite capable of stating my piece to whomever needs hear it.”

Before Elrond had quite fathomed that they three were not alone, Erestor had already insinuated himself between his nephew and the stranger, his posture at once protective of the former and threatening of the latter. “Show yourself,” he ordered, calmly. And then, to Cirdan: “You would bring with you a guest and let him languish, unannounced and unintroduced, while you bickered with us?”

But even Elrond could see the tension in his uncle’s shoulders, and the firmer stance he adopted, as the stranger stepped forward from his corner. For, as both of them were just realizing, it seemed that Círdan had actually _brought with him_ this supposed emissary out of the West.

Right into the heart of Imladris, peaceful sanctuary and current base of operations for their greatest-ever push against the resurrected Dark Lord in Mordor.

What had the Harbormaster been _thinking_?

But it was the stranger himself, his face and his form masterfully hidden by a cloak of worn grey-green traveler’s make, who answered Erestor’s incredulous question. “It is better I remain unannounced, my lords, by any other than myself.”

And at this, for the first time that Elrond had ever seen, Círdan simply nodded and stepped aside.

It was this uncharacteristic deferral, more than anything else of the exchange thus far, that most concerned Elrond. In his experience of the lord of the Falathrim, Círdan was not one to simply accede his place, or to let an exchange end without getting in a last, too-wise word aimed toward making his addressee feel young and foolish.

And yet, for this slight, hooded stranger, he simply stepped aside.

Before Elrond’s eyes Erestor’s back stiffened further. “Pray do us the honor of announcing yourself, then.”

Erestor’s left hand flew to the knife at his belt as the stranger’s hands rose to pull back his hood, and Elrond, though both irritated and humbled that his uncle obviously still deemed his own life fair exchange for Elrond’s own, decided he would neither restrain nor reprimand him. This entire exchange was too uncanny for his liking, and if Erestor felt more suited to dealing with it with a knife in his hand, then – well, Elrond could hardly claim that he was not missing his own sword at this moment either.

“I am called Thirist, now,” the stranger said. His voice was odd, toneless and distant – as if his name meant nothing, as if he had no stake in the words he spoke and nothing in them engendered any emotion.

Thirist. _Cut face_. The epessë seemed painfully obvious, for the newcomer’s lean face was indeed thus marred – four thin white scars ran the length of the right side, starting at his brow and tracing down across the lid of a mismatched pale eye before cutting across his lips and tapering out on his chin, only to reappear at his throat.

Yet the paler eye tracked their movements in tandem with its darker twin, as if undamaged by whatever hurt had caused the scars. The effect was made eerier yet by its utter improbability.

“Hail and well-met, then, Thirist of Lindon.” But even with Elrond’s small shove to his back, Erestor removed not his hand from his knife or his body from its place between his nephew and this stranger – this ‘emissary’ of Círdan’s. “Might we also trouble you for an account of the Harbormaster’s astonishing claims of you?”

“Not of Lindon, but lately of Mandos,” Thirist returned, and –

Oh. Oh stars, their guest was an elf reborn and returned from the Halls?

“And the Powers That Be have permitted me return to these shores and aid in your fight against Their fallen one,” Thirist concluded.

And not only that, but also one who had been killed in the recent wars?

Father help him. Where was the High King when a decision should most definitely be made by him and not his representatives?

But blast it all, Elrond was Ereinion’s herald, and blast it all, Elrond would deal with this as Ereinion’s herald!

Taking advantage of his uncle’s obvious shock to push past Erestor, Elrond strode forward to meet the stranger – Thirist – ignoring the gasp behind him and the hand that snatched futilely at his sleeve in passing.

Thirist simply watched him advance, odd mismatched eyes unblinking.

“Why?”

Blunt? Yes. Unwise? Probably. But Elrond could think of no other way of perhaps catching out a lie than through such unexpected directness, and Thirist, judging by his eerie uninflected tone, took no offence.

 “You are endangered by one who offends Their pride in Their image.”

An odd answer coming from an elf, which Thirist appeared to be, and more worrisome still, unfavorably reminiscent of another who had once disguised himself as an elf.

“Why you?” Elrond pressed, struggling to shake off his own memories of encountering the creature Annatar at Lindon’s court.

_He had claimed to be an emissary and a devotee of Aulë. . ._

 “I put myself forward.”

“Is that so.” This from Erestor, who had come to stand immediately at Elrond’s right hand – flanking him as one subordinate while also positioning himself with the ability to dart forward and take any blow in his nephew’s place. “And what do you claim to offer us in our strife against the Dark Lord?”

“I learned that They intended to send you a champion. But Their idea of one suitable was another of the Maiar, or instead a warrior from one of the gated realms – a lord of fallen Ondolindë or Menegroth – and I would not stand for it.”

If he had been anyone else, Elrond imagined, Erestor would have whimpered at the mention of his ancient home, and the hint that he might have seen again one of the many he had lost there.

Because he was Erestor, though, the hint only made him more vicious. “Such claims are no proof of your fitness or your tale, Thirist of Lindon. Provide better.”

Thirist did not even blink. “Neither would have the right stakes in your fight. Maiar only destroy. A lord who fought from behind closed doors could not stand before your enemy. Neither would do what is needed, which is anything necessary. But I will. I will do anything to rid these shores of your enemy.” 

Even Erestor blinked at the wording of such a violent promise – that Thirist, despite the apparent violence of his former life, considered the Dark Lord their enemy first before his own. And, apropos of nothing, Elrond had a sinking premonition of what had caused such thin, even scars.

Fingers, by the old wounds’ width and steady parallelism. Nails, placed at Thirist’s brow and raked down his face, their effect calculated for both damage and visibility. The thumb – well, the thumb might have hooked into the eye before, its bloody job completed, curling into the palm of the hand while the other four fingers finished their relentless scoring. 

Yes, then – going by appearances, Thirist had fought, and then he had died. But for all its paler shade, his right eye was clear, and by its movement, functioned as well as his left.

As if –

As if his body had been remade, but only those hurts which its makers had recognized as potential detriments to its functioning had actually been addressed.

And the scars, as they were not detrimental, had thus remained.

“There is also the matter of his delivery,” Círdan offered into the silence that followed, finally speaking up again. “The ship appeared with no warning, and it was not one of ours, which return at times with those of our sailors willing to ferry more West. This vessel was dark, and too small, and crewed by shadows-“

 “The Maiar of Mandos,” Thirist supplied. “It is perhaps best for all involved that they set no foot on these shores.”

Enough, enough! Elrond had had enough. “Say that we might believe you, as the Harbormaster corroborates your story-“

“Do not.”

Thirist spoke right over him, as if Elrond were not speaking at all.

“Do not believe me, do not trust me, do not trust one another. Lord Nowë could have been ensorcelled, your own eyes fooled, your wits clouded. My claims, my logics, my credentials are nothing new to you, and still you have not learned to question them.”

In the silence that followed what might have been meant as a question, the door to Elrond’s study opened.  “Forgive me my tardiness, my lords,” came Artaniel’s voice, before it too fell silent.

And then: “Get _back_!”

And still her reaction was quicker than theirs. By the time that Erestor had hustled Elrond back, and even Círdan had shrunk from that tone of utter command, the stranger Thirist had been laid out upon his back, Artaniel’s knife to his throat. It was – astonishing. Elrond would not have thought a daughter of the Golden Wood – of Artanis – capable of such speed and ferocity.

“One of you, at least, has the right of it,” Thirist said, as calm as if he were the one who had wrested the upper hand over a potential enemy.

He had neither evaded nor resisted Artaniel.

“What are you?” she snarled. “Speak truly, orc-spawn, for I have the Sight and I will know if you lie to me – and if you do, I will gut you like the worm you are.”

“Artaniel!” Erestor snapped, but the High King’s betrothed moved not a whit, and in fact betrayed no sign of having heard him.

All her attention was focused upon the stranger she held hostage at the point of a blade that Elrond had not even known she could wield. “Tell me!”

“He is an emissary from the Valar, child,” Círdan bleated in his turn.

At that, if anything, Artaniel’s knife actually pricked skin. “You dare wear that face in speaking that lie? What is the truth of your errand here, Morgoth-spawn? Speak to me!”

Whose – whose face?

“Perhaps it is best I show you,” Thirist said evenly. “Then you may judge me as you will.”

He made no move, but Artaniel went utterly still, her face frozen with horror. And then she was scrambling from her place atop his chest, all traces of the courtly captain and unexpected warrior gone as she keened with some unnamable emotion. “No. No!”

Thirist rose slowly, not as though in pain but as though his body resisted such easy, instinctive movement. “I knew you, then.”

Artaniel seemed to be struggling to restrain tears. “I – yes. Yes, you knew me very well.  I am Celebrían” – and when Thirist responded not to this – “daughter of Artanis, and Celeborn. Your niece?”

Whatever Thirist had done to her, the composure that Elrond had always seen wrapped about Artaniel was deteriorating rapidly. “I saw you dead, uncle. I saw you dead!”

Praise the Valar that Erestor ever had the same questions! “Artaniel. Artaniel! What is this madness?”

“My uncle,” she whispered. Her eyes never left Thirist. “Tyelperinquar.”

For all that he had been raised speaking both Quenya and Sindarin, Elrond had lost much day-usage of the first since his release from the Fëanorians’ guardianship. He would later offer this lack, and the fact that he had never met him, as the reason why this appellation meant less to him than it did to Erestor and Círdan, who both blanched at Artaniel’s words.

“Who?”

Thirist never looked to him, so the image must have come from Artaniel – a mangled body, broken and bloodied beyond all recognition, borne aloft as Sauron’s banner during the last war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
> 
> this is the chapter i have been dying to finish so i could share it


	3. living, like a disaster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tags subject to change, starting here! (you can probably guess whose fault that is, too, after the last chapter); also YAY, time to start adding relationship taaaaags (it's the same character's fault as above)

Thirist, as they would soon find themselves forced to continue calling him – for none of the few who knew could then look him in his unblinking mismatched eyes and say “Tyelperinquar” or “Celebrimbor,” and he answered not to such anyway – proved himself to be at once no trouble at all and also the greatest irritant in Elrond’s side.

This trouble-no trouble cycle first manifested with Ereinion.

Of course it did.

“What _now_ ,” the High King of all the Noldor in Middle-earth sighed with great theatrical gusto, upon finding both Elrond and Erestor awaiting him in the lower courtyard when he rode back from his latest venture into the Hithaeglir. Which quickly became “What the ever-loving _fuck_ , Gondolinhel, why did you let a _fucking wraith_ into El’s valley, _get it the fuck out of here_ , by the fucking Powers _GET AWAY FROM IT EL_ -“

Thirist only cocked his head.

It took some time to persuade Ereinion that Thirist was in fact an elf, and not only that but also, if Artaniel’s Sight had not been compromised – an option that initially Erestor would not relent in pursuing – in fact Celebrimbor of Eregion returned.

Ereinion, of course, took this stellar opportunity to make trouble of his own, fighting fire with fire.

“Do you talk?” he asked shortly, jabbing Thirist in the shoulder as if ascertaining whether the other Noldo was in fact solid.

Thirist looked down at the offending finger and up at the offending King with not the slightest change in expression. “When the occasion calls for speech.”

“Fuck you too, cousin,” Ereinion said with great feeling, punctuating some rising emotion with one last especially vicious jab. “We tried to _warn_ you, you great fucking albatross, and what did you do? Fucking let that demon waltz right into your city and join the Mírdain, prance about telling you he could solve all the problems you didn’t even fucking have. Cousin, we were so fucking _worried_ about you, and then to hear – no, you know what? Fuck your gullibility. Fuck it all.”

Ereinion then stormed back around the table and slammed into the seat at its head, which normally he had to be cajoled into taking to make his presence more official. “Tell us about these Rings, then, cousin – or whatever the fuck you’re calling yourself these days. And none of those cryptic fucking warnings or fol-de-rol about _getting my just deserts this time_ either.”

Having met Thirist now, Elrond was suddenly able to appreciate – albeit through a healthy dose of horror – just how accurate Ereinion’s impression of Celebrimbor actually was. And although he could see the point of Ereinion’s, erm, _request_ – when cornered by Erestor and Elrond himself not so long ago, the High King had proven to know little more of the Rings beyond the fact that there were three, one for each of _mumble mumble_ elements – Ereinion’s callousness toward a hero of their people who had been slain in such a horrific fashion was difficult to accept.

Artaniel seemed to think so too – perhaps the first time that Elrond had agreed with her on anything. “Ereinion-“

Ereinion raised an imperious hand, and the power, the expectation of obedience, in this single gesture sent a shiver down Elrond’s spine. “No, ‘Rian – I have had enough of endangering my own without fucking knowing _why_ , and I’m not about to do it again if there is no need! I will hear this. _Now_.”

In this as in Artaniel’s rough treatment of him, though, Thirist betrayed no sign of anger – or indeed, any sign of anything at all. “Tell me what you would have explained.”

“Everything that we need to fucking _know_ ,” Ereinion said impatiently. The hand that he had raised now came down upon the table with resounding finality, but his fingers quickly rose to drum against the wooden grain.

“There are many,” Thirist began. He did not specify: many of _what_. And then: “We made sixteen together.”

He did not clarify who the “we” was, either. He did not need to.

Elrond felt sick. 

“I then made three more, alone, when I suspected him,” Thirist continued. “These you have, for I sent them away as soon as I could. And he made a final one when he doubted me, and that one he kept, and turned against our city.”

And there Thirist stopped, and regarded them unblinking as ever.

“That’s it?” Ereinion exploded. “Dammit, Tyelpe, I-“

But even he stopped, when Thirist finally, _finally_ turned the full force of his odd gaze elsewhere than the middle distance before him. Elrond saw Ereinion’s own eyes widen as Thirist met them.

“It would be better, for all of us, did you not name me as such again,” the returned Noldo said. It seemed a clear enough warning, for all that his voice never changed in pitch or in tone. “Thirist, my lord, will do quite well.”

“Yes, well – oh, _fine_.” Ereinion snapped when he said it, but Elrond noticed that he only spoke up again when Thirist had looked away once more. “Thirist, then. O Thirist, will you deign to inform us of what these bloody Rings of yours _do_? Why the fuck are they so dangerous, eh?”

“They draw upon the will of the wearer and the facilities of the elements,” Thirist returned, simply. “Their combined power can be put to any use that the wearer envisions. Their only inherent limits are those of the wearer.”

“That does not sound so dire,” Erestor murmured from his seat alongside Elrond.

And to him Thirist turned his gaze next. “And yet it _is_ so dire, prince of the Fallen Rock. Consider that his will and his strength are greater than those of any elf, and ever will be.”

And now it was Erestor who blanched, and could not return Thirist’s gaze.

The returned Noldo looked away again, back into the middle distance as before. “He touched them not, and they are free of his taint. But he knows of them. And he can, and he will, reach out to who dares don one. He will stroke their wills, dangle before them dreams of dominion while setting his own snares tight, and thus my Rings become a window into temptation incarnate. For who among us would not think, but I am strong enough, I will wait for him; I will stand against him; I will prevail, and I will make the world better for having done so?”

With a chill, Elrond realized that Thirist must be speaking of himself as much as of any who now carried a Ring of Power. Surely this had been what Celebrimbor had done – waited for his deceiver and friend of old at the gates of Ost-in-Edhil and tried to reason with him, only for his parleys to be rebuffed and his death wrought in the most ignominious fashion possible.

Erestor shifted and Artaniel whimpered. Círdan had left the study at a near-run several hours before, following that initial revelation of Thirist’s old name.

Ereinion, damn him, only grumbled. “Give me a minute, eh, let me see if I’m understanding the level of fuckery we have going on here. So. What you’re saying is that we have to hang onto these fucking things, which could be the most powerful weapons we have against a nigh-undefeatable enemy, and _we can’t even fucking use them_?”

None of them had ever admitted as much outright, of course, but as Ereinion said it Elrond realized that – yes. For all that they had done, and still had yet to do, there was the distinct possibility that this Last Alliance would fail. There was more than a passing chance that all their gathered might – already some thousands and thousands of heads strong, with more still planned to join them east of the Hithaeglir – would not be enough to challenge the Dark Lord.

And if they were thrown down before him. . .

There would be no one else standing between the creeping ambitions of a fallen Power and the great green lands of Middle-earth.

Valar. . .

But there was one glaring hole in Thirist’s tale thus far, and either no one else had seen it, or else no one was willing to risk looking into Thirist’s eyes again. But, Elrond determined, he had not yet borne the brunt of that stare, as Artaniel and Ereinion and Erestor all had; it seemed only fair that he be the one to shoulder it next.

“You said that They would have sent us another of the Maiar?” he asked quietly, as if of the table at large.

And yes, there it was – Thirist was finally looking at him.

But also _through_ him and _into_ him, _seeing_ him – every part of Elrond that, for good or for ill, made him son of Eärendil and nephew of Erestor and ward of Maglor and devoted of Ereinion 

and Elrond was seeing into him in turn, everything of the other that made him Thirist – the cut-face released from Mandos at his incessant demands but also lord of Ost-in-Edhil, beloved leader of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain and smith of the forges, cards-partner of Celeborn and uncle of Artaniel, protégé of a Maia of Aulë and victim of Sauron and lover of

no

no, no

 _He was screaming. His lover had promised to defile him as his own trust had been defiled, and he had made good upon this threat for days, every tool of their trade and every trick of their bodies pressed into its service. He had not known that this much pain could exist in this world or that he had deserved to reap it so, but he was weak and he knew that much at least and he would do anything at all to make it just_ stop

Gradually he became aware of something shaking him by the shoulders – shoulders that were his, Elrond’s, and only his: shoulders that were whole and attached to an unbroken collarbone, bracketing a neck that was not snapped and a throat that had never been pierced by an iron-tipped spear.

“Elrond! Elrond! _Elrond son of Eärendil_!” It was Erestor, of course. “What have you _done_ to him, reject of Mandos?”

But as his senses and his own mind gradually returned to him, Elrond could not look to his frantic uncle at his side or even Ereinion at his feet, the High King utterly unheeding of his fine clothes as he knelt and clasped Elrond’s hands, great dark eyes wide with concern and breath hitching from a dash around the table or perhaps a vault across it.

Elrond could not even appreciate the tactility and the depths of Ereinion’s concern. He had eyes only for Thirist.

“Is this –“ His voice was slow in returning, and as hoarse as though he had been screaming. Much as the Celebrimbor of that vision had been, in fact.

Elrond found he could not quite articulate the question he needed answered, if the High King and his supporters were to know the depths of the horror that they would be facing in Mordor – or indeed, the depths of the horror that they were facing _here_.

_Is this what you showed them too?_

Thirist seemed to understand the question anyway, unfinished as it was. “No,” he said. He seemed entirely unaffected by reliving such a harrowing memory. “Only you, son of the Powers’ most beloved champions. So that you might see why I would have no Maiar, no Vanya-lords, usurping my place in your fight.”

Elrond could feel his reason revolting along with his senses, and he knew not what was worse.

That Celebrimbor had lo – no, had felt some mistaken affection for Sauron, the creature that came to deceive him? Or that Sauron had so deceived him, and then subjected him to such cruel, unending torment?

Or perhaps it was that Celebrimbor had abandoned his thrice-earned peace in the West to help them stand against such a despicable enemy? That he, so violently disembodied, had taken up a body once more despite the hurt that had been done to him through his last one, and now proposed to hurl it against its killer once more if that was what it would take to achieve their victory?

A dry retch tore itself from the back of Elrond’s throat.

“El.” Ereinion sounded near as frantic as Erestor, as if he had been calling his herald for a long time already. “El. El. _El_! ‘Rian, restrain that thing until we figure out what the fuck is going on.” There was movement around the table, but Elrond’s eyes remained only half-focused despite his best efforts and he could not quite discern it.

But Artaniel was valiant indeed if she dared move against Thirist despite their first encounter. She must –

She must place a deal of trust in Ereinion, to obey him despite the experience countermanding his order.

Damn her. Damn them both.

“No, Gil.” Finally, words began to return to him. “No, Captain – leave our guest be. Please. I was merely – merely surprised.”

“Merely surprised, my fucking ass,” Ereinion barked, clutching his hand even tighter, as if relieved that he finally stirred and spoke. “Oh, stop hovering, Gondolinhel, and get him some fucking water! El. El! What the fuck was that about?”

Elrond sought Thirist across the table, but was careful, this time, to not quite meet that odd and powerful gaze. “My lord?”

_May I tell them?_

“I am no one’s lord,” Thirist said, and yes, that was Artaniel behind him with her knife to his throat once more, though Elrond noted she was very careful not to touch him this time. “Tell them what you feel they must be told.”

So Elrond did.

And though he spoke not of the intimate details he had glimpsed, but only of the bond and its betrayal, that was quite shock and consternation enough. For none of them had known that Celebrimbor had lo-

that Celebrimbor had been so utterly deceived in Annatar.

Erestor grew cold and rigid, and began to pace, to murmur, furiously.

Ereinion, of course, shouted.

And, the apparent danger to Elrond passed, Artaniel forsook her place at Thirist’s back and fled to the window in the furthest corner of Elrond’s study, where she hunched into herself and wept.

But this was not the maidenly grief that Elrond would later be ashamed to admit that he had expected of her – tears quiet and delicate, muffled discretely behind a backturned hand or a slip of cloth. No, Artaniel bit into her own knuckles until the skin paled and split, and she sobbed in great, gasping breaths, cries wrenched from the depths of her gut. Her frame shuddered with the force of them, and with the hopeless effort of attempting to keep them muffled.   

Artaniel’s grief was ungainly, and ugly, and – _real_.

And it made – a terrible amount of sense, when he considered it. Neither he nor Erestor had ever met Celebrimbor before, which was why they had not recognized him at the Harbormaster’s entrance, his body bearing the signs of his death but otherwise reformed to the same design as it had during his life. And though Ereinion had known Celebrimbor, his acquaintance had been brief and largely from a distance – first as Celebrimbor was one of two possible contenders for Ereinion’s title as High King of the Noldor in Middle-earth, and then later as a remote acquaintance, a vassal in name if not anything remotely approaching reality.

But Artaniel – Artaniel would have known Celebrimbor from her childhood in Eregion. She would have grown up knowing him well, a kindly if distractible uncle, and she would have lost him twice already – once with her mother’s emigration in high dudgeon to Laurelindórenan, and then again with his death in the razing of Ost-in-Edhil. She would even had seen Celebrimbor’s body, as Elrond had once, borne before their enemy’s forces in terrible tribute to Sauron’s anger and his might.

So to know, now, how much more terrible her uncle’s death had been than even they had imagined – to know that Celebrimbor had found peace for a time, first in a bond _false though it might have been_ and then later in the West, only to have had both torn from him. . .

Well. Elrond could not but find Artaniel’s grief – understandable. And with Ereinion still distracted by his shouting – and Erestor both distracted and unable to relinquish a grudge that his nephew did not let go first – there was no one left to acknowledge that pain but him.

Elrond had always prided himself on his ability to set aside the things he could not change. He had been forced to develop this ability very young with the unexplained disappearance of both his mother and Erestor in Sirion; had developed it further with Maglor’s banishing him and his brother to Balar, as they had seen it at the time, and further still with the Great War, Elros’s choice of mortality, Elros’s death.

What was one more inexorable reality to add to such a tally, really?

So Elrond swallowed and pushed aside his jealousy of Celebrían Artaniel. Promised himself that he would accept her allotment of all that he could never have, whether that might be a place at Ereinion’s side, sanctioned in peace as well as in war, or acceptance as his equal in the eyes of their people – or even, someday, a place in Ereinion’s bed.

It was done. He was done.

Resolution made, Elrond stood – shaking still, ever so slightly, in the wake of Thirist’s vision – and left his seat at the council table to rummage in his desk for a kerchief.

“Elrond!” Erestor hissed from behind him, but Elrond ignored his uncle. Finding a cloth that would do, he retraced Artaniel’s steps to the window seat and, wordlessly, offered it to her.  

She said nothing, and neither did he. Her grief for her uncle did not recede, and neither did his pain for himself. But Artaniel nodded, once, as she accepted the cloth and pressed it to her grotty face, her bleeding knuckles, and slowly, ever so slowly, her sobs subsided. And together they waited there, each shaken in their own different way, for their High King to remember that there was a war to be waged, and that at some point he ought to stop shouting at Thirist for being stupid enough to have lo- to have fallen so thoroughly for a creature as evil as Sauron.  

It was done. He had suffered enough.

And Thirist had even given up his peace to come and aid them against his deceiver, had he not?

 

~ ~ ~

In the end, though, the appearance of Thirist, returned from the Halls of the dead to slip along the corridors of Imladris, did not change their original plan so drastically at all.

It helped that Erestor’s judicious scheduling had calculated for the bulk of their forces to have crossed the Hithaeglir by the last days of autumn, leaving behind only the civilians, Ereinion’s guard, and a few companies from each of the four armies to winter in the valley. Elrond needled his uncle for sending Imladris’s warriors away from their homes and families before strictly necessary, but it was an argument made largely for form’s sake: he could see the value in demonstrating that the valley stood committed to its allies, and held not back its own.

Still.

The silence in the great main house that winter made it easy, sometimes, to forget that Thirist was even there. The returned Noldo, already sparing of speech and near-silent in step, slipped away from the currents of communal life, and few saw him, let alone spoke with him.

Erestor was able to question him about this, but once and only once. And Elrond only knew of that conversation because he pressed until Erestor told him.

“He looked at me – no, fret not, dearheart, not like _that_ –“ Elrond could tell that his uncle was nervous when Erestor slipped into the diminutives of Elrond’s own youth in Sirion: “ – and he told me, quite seriously, that it would not do to be seen by his former people.”

But – why?

“Would they truly be so quick to revile him?” Elrond wondered. Celebrimbor, their beloved lord and fallen hero? “And to what ends?”

Erestor seemed haunted by his recent conversation, however brief it might have been. “No, no,” he said distractedly. “From what I could tell it was more that he may not have been the only their enemy killed in that fashion, or perhaps that he knew the slayings had not ended with him. Or – ai, dearheart, it was difficult to tell, and I dared not press too far. But be that as it may, he would hear nothing of being announced to the valley. He even said that he may cross the Hithaeglir before we do.”

“I hope you at least attempted to dissuade him, given the severity of the snows.” Ereinion had been given Elrond’s study as a sort of winter headquarters – not that the blasted Noldo ever sat down to read a scrap of paper if he could find something else to distract himself with – and that was their destination now. Still, it seemed – oddly fortuitous that Erestor had been able to waylay Thirist at this convenient juncture, when they were just preparing to meet and finalize plans for the spring’s march.

“Of course I did,” Erestor said, following Elrond through the half-open doors of his former study. “I harbor grave doubts, though, as-“

Whatever Erestor’s doubts, they were lost as Thirist himself emerged from the study before them, brushing past without any acknowledgement whatsoever and disappearing rapidly down the hall in the direction of the guest wing.

Elrond exchanged an alarmed look with his uncle.

“Speak of the Morgoth-spawn. . . “ Erestor murmured, and from the depths of the study Ereinion hollered: “Will you stop skulking already, Gondolinhel? Get in here so we can fight like Noldor!”

Apparently, Thirist had been questioning the High King concerning the whereabouts of the Rings. “And he was _very_ happy to learn that I had entrusted one to Círdan, and still another to Artanis,” Ereinion reported grumpily. “Didn’t quite chew me out like you would have, El, but gave me this displeased little glower and flapped out like an overgrown bat with his wings in a twist.”

The High King of all the Noldor in Middle-earth let his arms fall to the desk and his head fall to his arms. “Fuck but I’m tired. Any chance of us putting off this oh-so-essential meeting of yours, Gondolinhel? I could use a drink, or three, if we can spare them. El! We sent Elendil away already, didn’t we? Dammit. Gondolinhel! Which fruits of the vine _haven’t_ already been spoken for then?”

Erestor was just letting himself be roped into a spirited debate over the role that liquor should serve within a high-strung military force when Elrond heard the doors to the study open again behind them.

Thirist, completely ignoring the fact that there was a conversation ongoing, walked right up to the desk behind which Ereinion was ensconced and dropped a fistful of cloth before him.

It was ragged around the edges, as if torn from a larger whole, and of the same blue as the robes that the Harbormaster typically favored.

“Find a better guardian,” Thirist said simply.

Then he turned and walked out again.

There was a moment’s silence as all three of them stared after him in wonder. Then:

“He does _not_ fuck around, that one, I’ll give him that much,” Ereinion said with a snort. He was already peeling the cloth apart with ginger trepidation. “It looks like – yep, hullo, Narya here. He-of-the-Fires – wonderful. Just wonderful.”

All three were extraordinarily careful not to actually touch It, but it seemed that none – even Ereinion, who had surely seen this one before – could resist leaning forward to see how another Ring of Power might appear. And it was disappointing, in a way: much like Vilya, Narya hardly looked threatening or important or even particularly valuable. The Ring of Fire was simply a simple red-gold band with a crimson stone inset, where Elrond’s charge was lighter with a blue stone.

Elrond would be doubting the veracity of Thirist’s claims by now – and he imagined Erestor would be doing the same – if he hadn’t seen the power, the lure, the danger of Vilya firsthand during the rise of the Bruinen.

“D’you think he just walked up to Círdan and tore it off the sanctimonious prick’s neck?” Ereinion wondered, folding the edges of the cloth back together with the same care as before. “Ballsy move, Fëanorian, but then I guess I shouldn’t be doubting the stones on the fellow if he actually went and fucking bedded _Sauron_ , eh? O- _ho_ , I have it. Gondolinhel!”

“Majesty?” Erestor asked, but he seemed to be having trouble looking away from Narya as Its form was shrouded once more.

“Oi!” Ereinion slid the cloth packet into a pocket and snapped his fingers. “Eyes up here, Gondolinhel! What was your plan to greet Amdír and jostle that stick he has up his ass, again? Oh stop wincing, El, it was a figure of speech before dear cousin Celebrimbor and it will remain a figure of speech long after dear cousin Celebrimbor. Erestor! Fancy the chances of sending our very own special guest along with that delegation, see if he rains some fury down upon auntie dearest? Can you just imagine. . .” Ereinion trailed off, smirking. “I would give half my coffers just to _watch_.”

Erestor looked like he was considering this madcap possibility seriously. “And I would authorize the expenditure, Majesty.”

“Erestor!” Elrond protested.

“That’s it, you’re my new financier, welcome aboard!” Ereinion clapped his hands. “Oh, stop fretting, El, there’s no way we’re getting that one into a function of state and we all know it. But a king can dream, eh? Fap to the thought of avoiding his detestable future mother-in-law and his responsibility to talk her out of a highly dangerous time bomb, just a little?”

“Majesty!” This time it was Erestor protesting, and Elrond refrained from joining him only because a far more pressing question had just made itself known.

“Gil.”

“El,” Ereinion echoed comfortably, leaning back in his chair and resting first one boot, then the other, atop the once-pristine desk.

“ _Gil_ ,” Elrond pressed. This was no joking matter. “Did you tell our guest that _I_ had a Ring?”

The boots came back down immediately and with a vehement _thump_. “Oh fuck.” Ereinion looked concerned. “El, I did. Don’t kill me, Gondolinhel, I had no idea he had some kind of bloody vendetta going on!”

But – was it a simple vendetta? For Thirist had walked right past Elrond on his way out of the study to accost Círdan, just after Ereinion had revealed the Ringbearers – and then again when returning Narya to Ereinion’s desk. And neither time had the returned Noldo looked at Elrond as though he were contemplating removing Vilya from his care, whether with violence or without.

It took some work to help Erestor and the High King see this, and to convince them that no, Elrond didn’t need guards because no, Thirist surely wouldn’t just attack him, but once they had accepted that he might be right. . .

“Of course he wouldn’t protest you as a Ringbearer,” Ereinion said fondly. “There’s no way _you_ are in any danger of falling into Sauron’s bed, eh El, no matter how prettily that damn Maia might offer!”

Erestor rather looked as though he would like to strike the High King across the face for such a comment, and Elrond was already wondering, with some exhaustion, how he himself could soothe a roomful of allied leaders if Ereinion persisted in insulting him too, when the High King continued:

“Because I _know_ you, El, and you’re about the best fucking person I know – you wouldn’t be tempted into such obvious horseshit if there was even the whiff of a possibility that it might hurt someone else. Sauron and all his Rings wouldn’t stand a fucking chance against you, El, and I’m lucky to have you.”  

Oh, Valar. . .

Somehow, this admiring bit of honesty from Ereinion hurt even more than his earlier crack about bedding Sauron.

“Thank you, Gil,” Elrond said tiredly, and excused himself from the ensuing logistical discussion as soon as possible, pleading a headache that Ereinion bought and Erestor most emphatically did not.

At least, Elrond thought bitterly upon fleeing his own study, Ereinion hadn’t claimed there was nothing Elrond could be tempted with.

For in that as well as his assessment of his herald, the High King would have been sorely mistaken.

 

~ ~ ~

And if spring seemed a little longer in coming after that particular conversation, then – well. Elrond had no one to blame but himself for letting Ereinion’s admiring words run circles around his mind.

Similarly, there was no one but ill-timing to blame for a conversation he overheard but a fortnight before they set out across the Hithaeglir.

“I’m afraid Your Majesty will have to articulate his reasons for requesting the change a little more clearly in order for me to evaluate them,” Erestor was saying just as Elrond reached the door of his office.

Elrond froze in the act of reaching to knock.

“We need rooms together so we can – oh for crying out loud, Gondolinhel! Are you really going to make me say it?” Ereinion sounded frustrated.

“ _Yes_ ,” Erestor hissed, and the venom in his voice was clear even through the closed door.

 _Please, uncle. Do not reveal me to him!_ Not for the first time, Elrond regretted that he had not the Sight, with its inbuilt capacity to reach others across minds.

But of course Erestor had long kept Elrond’s painful confidences, and he could certainly do so while still punishing Ereinion for his unknowing part in them.

“Perhaps, if you can look me in the eye and ask me to allocate you shared chambers so that you might bed a diplomat of Laurelindórenan with more convenience, then you might realize how utterly selfish you are being,” Erestor continued, anger dripping from every precisely-chosen word. “But if you can do _that_ , Majesty, then you are _far_ less worthy of the regard and leadership you hold over those currently so much less content and comfortable than yourself.”

The ensuring silence would probably have been a good time for Elrond to back away from the door, but he was too stunned to move.

_Ereinion wanted to bed Artaniel Ereinion wanted to bed Artaniel Ereinion wanted to bed Artaniel_

 “ _Hell_ , Gondolinhel, you are as bad as your nephew,” Ereinion breathed, his stunned amazement at the attack clearly audible even through the door. “Sheathe those claws, I’m bleeding out! If it offends your sensibilities so – and I _will_ figure out why, sooner or later – then of course I’ll remain frustrated and sore of hand until we actually set out. And thank you for sparing me a moment of your valuable time to remind me what a greedy fool I so obviously am.”

Beneath Elrond’s very hand the door opened. Ereinion almost walked into him as he stepped out.

“Ah, El!” He made his greeting with a smile, but Elrond could see how forced the cheer was. “Careful, your pet gore-crow’s in a mood today – step light if you don’t want an eye pecked out, eh?”

And then he was gone, and Elrond was standing in the doorway, torn.

“I am sorry,” Erestor said quietly, when Elrond had finally mustered the will to enter his office. “I did not realize you had arrived already, or that you would hear us. How long were you there?”

_Long enough to know what he was asking for. Long enough to feel the very floors pulling at my feet. Long enough to grow old and bowed and weary._

“Long enough.” He was so tired. So tired. “Let them have the rooms together, Erestor. We have the space.”

Erestor’s own eyes were suspiciously bright. “Oh, _child_. Elrond. Elrond, come here.”

And Elrond did not fight his uncle when Erestor rose from behind his desk and came around to embrace him, as if he were indeed a child again.

“Please, dearheart,” Erestor said softly. “I cannot give you much, but – let me give you this last fortnight of peace, at least.”

And Elrond, a tear or two already escaping onto his uncle’s shoulders, was not strong enough to insist otherwise.

Would Thirist still find him so worthy of bearing a Ring now?

Surely Ereinion would not.

 

~ ~ ~

But even then, Thirist did not materialize to rip Vilya from his hands.

No, the rational part of Elrond knew, Thirist had likely had his own reasons for judging Cirdan as harshly as he had, but still.

As spring came, the snows thawed, and the final holdouts of the Last Alliance in Imladris prepared themselves for the march east across the Mountains, Elrond spent those last nights awaiting a visit from Thirist.

And still he waited, during their trek across the Hithaeglir, banners snapping and spirits high. And still he waited, during their navigation of the eastern pass, still half-blocked with snow. And still he waited, even as they made their triumphant descent towards Faerveren’s teeming war-camps, Elrond riding beside Ereinion and bearing the High King’s standard.

And although it was there that Elrond next saw Thirist again, from the corner of his eye as Ereinion made his exuberant greetings to Elendil and Faerveren, still the returned Noldo made no move to relieve him of Vilya, or even to acknowledge that Elrond still bore the Ring of Air.

Again, the rational part of his mind insisted that Thirist was not trying to trap him into proving his worth.

But ai, Elrond felt tested all the same.

Tested, tried, and found wanting.

 


	4. called him over

But Ereinion’s work – and by extension, Elrond’s and Erestor’s – hardly ended now that the campaign was finally, fully underway. If anything, it became more arduous, as being east of the Hithaeglir now meant actually dealing with Ereinion’s much-vaunted “chaps in the east.”

Dealings that, as it turned out, hinged almost entirely upon Laurelindórenan. For all that the Golden Wood was one of the smaller kingdoms in the east, and for all that so many high-ranking denizens had actually turned out to gape at Ereinion’s sprawling war-camps, everyone from the Greenwood to the Mountain Halls to Khazad-dûm seemed to be watching to see how the Noldor would deal with the Galadhrim.

No, Elrond amended to himself with a rueful sigh, that was not quite it. Actually, Oropher of the Greenwood and Ímundur of Khazad-dûm were assessing how Amdír of Laurelindórenan had fared with Artanis taking up residence in his lands, and, if Elrond was any judge, were storing up observations that would inform their own eventual decisions about allying with the Noldor. Meanwhile, Amdír of Laurelindórenan was committed in word to upholding his ties with Forlindon and the goodwill of the High King, but in actuality was chary of leaving his realm in the hands of his untried son Amroth; Elrond had already heard rumors that Artanis had approached both father and son with offers of counsel, and had only been turned down with difficulty.

And Elendil, who had met precious few Elves and not a single Khazad before this winter, seemed stuck gaping in awe. And Círdan, who seemed to have gained a healthy dose of fear thanks to whatever Thirist had done to him in retrieving Narya, steered clear of them all whenever possible, unsure of where the returned Noldo would appear next.

And Elrond had not actually seen Thirist at all since first riding out of the Mountains.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to call them all mad dogs, Elrond thought uncharitably. What with all the circling and snapping and surreptitious weighing of pricks, most days you could hardly tell the difference.

In truth, though, Elrond had learned one thing from his duties of greeting and seeing the various leaders settled before their eventual treaty-making: none of the eastern rulers much seemed to like the thought of following Ereinion, High King of the Noldor.

“No offense intended, pretty thing, but it’s hardly as if the Noldor have the most _outstanding_ record of winning the fights they start,” Oropher of the Greenwood drawled. Artaniel, whom Ereinion had assigned to accompany his herald on most of these welcomes in her own diplomatic capacity, all but growled when the Sinda king dared to run the backs of his fingers lightly down Elrond’s cheek. “Though _how_ you dark-haired creatures manage to look so positively _divine_ even in losing hardly seems fair, Woodsman as my witness. . .”

“Lord Eärendilion-“ Artaniel started angrily, when they had been dismissed from Oropher’s presence with a magnanimous wave.

“Lady Artaniel,” Elrond said tiredly, forestalling her. “Please, leave it. It is not worth jeopardizing Ereinion’s hopes for.” Oropher had led the Sinda survivors of the Great War to safety among the Silvans of the Greenwood – however uncouth his approach, there was a grain of truth informing it.

At his insistence Artaniel subsided, still fuming on his behalf, and despite everything, Elrond felt warmed by this obvious regard for his dignity.

And on and on the litany of complications continued.

Amdír of Laurelindórenan, whom Elrond had not met previously, wanted to know why he had not been greeted by Ereinion personally, king to king – and then pulled Elrond aside to warn him against Artaniel, for Amdír had recognized her as the daughter of Artanis, a lady of subtle standing and power in his own lands. Elrond, struggling to balance diplomacy with the need to keep Artaniel’s betrothal secret, was forced to inform the king of Laurelindórenan that yes, both he and Ereinion knew of Artanis’s lineage, and also that yes, she was an important member of the High King’s court regardless. By his face, Amdír’s ability to trust Ereinion’s judgement was shrinking right before Elrond’s eyes.

Ímundur of Khazad-dûm, another dignitary Elrond had no experience with, seemed to distrust all those who were not Khazad – indiscriminately. “Your king is putting together a keg of powder and hoping it goes off in that demon’s face instead of his own,” he said acridly. “You dark-Elves were the ones who welcomed the light-god into your craft-halls, and the Men of Numenór the ones that crowned him alongside their own king!” But when Elrond attempted to press further seeking the source of the Khazad’s trouble, Ímundur said only that he was descended of Narvi, and when neither Elrond nor Artaniel seemed to recognize the name, shook his head with a grunt. “See, this is all that will come of dealing with outsiders – none of you know our history, or what you are asking of us.” He waved them away with a sigh. “Tell that to your king, boy.”

Elendil, whose uncanny resemblance to Elros had not subsided with the passage of the winter or the navigation of the Hithaeglir, informed Elrond with some nerves that he had been accosted several times by Sinda jeering him as a puppet of Morgoth. Was it something he had said? Elrond had not the heart to tell him that it was because he was a Man, and a Man recently of Numenór at that – he could only promise Elendil that he would look into the disturbances. Elendil seemed to sense that there was more to the story than this but graciously did not press, and Elrond, glimpsing his dead brother again in the Man’s kindliness, was forced to excuse himself with undue haste, relying on Artaniel to smooth his departure.

Free from the confines of the tent’s smothering walls, he bent nearly double, heaving for breath that eluded him. Artaniel, her footsteps coming to a halt behind him, laid a commiserating hand at his shoulder, and it was a measure of how far they had come since that first meeting, Elrond thought wearily, that he found the touch comforting rather than something to dread and detest.  

Valar – at this rate, Ereinion’s Last Alliance would disintegrate long before it had even begun marching for Mordor.

It could have been worse, Elrond thought, uncharitable again despite Artaniel’s mute support. At least they had not been expected to greet Artanis, in name a mere resident of Laurelindórenan, as a dignitary alongside Amdír, that land’s actual king.

 

~ ~ ~

Artanis made up for it, of course, when she came unannounced to Ereinion’s first gathering of the eastern rulers.

Not that this meeting ultimately proved to require her famed conflict-mongering in order to simmer and boil over like an unattended stew – put all the anxieties and conflicts and outright neuroses Elrond had observed into a single tent, no matter how large and well-furnished, and there was sure to be trouble. But that was also not to say that Artanis did not meddle at all.

For meddle she did.

When Oropher, haggling like a fishwife and leering like a merchant, turned his attentions to Nimrodel, a representative of the Nandor in Laurelindórenan, Artanis spared a commiserating glance for Amdír, as if to say _see what we must put up with?_ – leaving Amdír sputtering, unable to either rebuke a peer in Oropher or defend an outspoken rival in Nimrodel, but now also conscious that Artanis saw these weaknesses and exposed them to all watching, and in a manner that could draw no rebuke itself without granting her more power than she held in name. And when Elendil, betraying his race’s utter ignorance of inter-people grievances older than the Isle of the Star, wondered at Ímundur’s claiming to stand for the peoples of Nogrod and Belegost when he himself came from Khazad-dûm, Artanis made as if to hide a smile, too late, behind her hand. It might have been taken as a dismissal of the Khazad or pity for the Man, but in either light the gesture pitted the Elven attendees against their non-Elven counterparts.

It was all too easy to forget or dismiss Artanis’s long-honed skills until one watched them in action. And she had not even spoken yet.

“I meant no insult,” Elendil was just now protesting. “I did not know of your lost kingdoms, Master Dwarf, and I pray you can forgive any unwitting slight against your people.”

“A pretty excuse, and fairly presented,” Ímundur acknowledged philosophically, though the effect was ruined when he continued: “Probably the same one you’d offer about that Zigûrun of yours too, though.”

Elendil, understandably provoked by this conflation with the King’s Men, stood in a sudden fury. “My father and his before him opposed that _dôlgon_ with their lives, Master Dwarf!”

“And yet there you stand, offering the scraps of an empire pulled into the sea as if such flotsam would be able to defeat your former sovereign in any way,” Ímundur said, imperturbably.

“That – our – I-” Elendil looked to be seconds away from an explosion, or perhaps from falling upon the Khazad with his fists. “That _creature_ was not our _king_!” he bellowed, and he might have meant Ar-Pharazôn or he might have meant Sauron. “And this ‘flotsam’ you so deride was still mighty enough to have established new kingdoms for itself in the North, Master Dwarf!”

“Mighty indeed, to be taking back the burnt lands left empty,” Amdír cut in, obviously not one to simply observe the makings of such an excellent fight.

And to Amdír’s left, Oropher actually snorted in agreement. “And he would _know_ , having exercised such _admirable_ might of his own to take the poor lost _Nandor_ of the Golden Wood under his capable wing.”

Amdír growled at the tone, incensed at the constant reminders that his own kingdom was much smaller and less troubled than Oropher’s. Further down, Nimrodel snarled at the slight to her own people, much outnumbered by Amdír’s Galadhrim refugees from the Great War.  

 Amidst the growing racket, poor Ereinion looked one more exchange away from lying his head atop his arms on the table. “Chaps. . .”

“Ereinion,” Artanis said, deceptively gentle even in apparent rebuke. “Can you not control your allies?”

“They aren’t my allies yet, auntie,” Ereinion growled. “In fact, that’s what today was meant to establish!”

“Mm- _hmmmm_ ,” Oropher broke in. Elrond hadn’t realized the others had paused in their own spats long enough to listen in on this one. “Ereinion, darling, whatever our other – _considerable_ differences – I think I can speak for all on this side of the Mountains when I say that we won’t be _controlled_ by you.”

Amdír looked further infuriated at having missed the chance to establish himself as spokesperson for the entire region, but also seemed not to dare speak up, lest he be seen as in full support of the Noldor.

“In _fact_ ,” Oropher continued, tapping slender fingers against his chin, fully aware that by now he held the attention of every dignitary at Ereinion’s table: “Lady _Artanis_ , weren’t you _just_ telling me that there could be issues with the kingship among your _own_ people?”   

“Oh, my lord Sinda, I would hardly go that far, though I am just as curious about the truth as you must be,” Artanis promised, her voice low and guileless. Valar, Elrond thought with growing exhaustion, not this argument again. . . But Artanis continued: “Ereinion has never confirmed it, but the Fingon I remember could never have begotten a child.”

Oh. And that was a much cruder reference to the rumors of the former High King’s relationship with the steward of Himring than even Artanis normally used. What was she driving at this time?

But now it was Círdan, who had only been persuaded to attend this meeting at all by the promise that Thirist probably would not be there, who intervened, standing with a clatter. “This is preposterous.”

What was it with all of these leaders, Elrond wondered, that they felt the need to vie for all eyes upon them?

Beside Elrond, Erestor shifted uneasily in his seat as Oropher turned to the High King, looking down his nose at Ereinion in high dudgeon. “Majesty. Your efforts in clearing the roads and protecting travelers to the Havens have not gone unnoticed, but I can only return your gracious favor if there is actually a plan in place. If there is not, and we have all been relocated simply to argue the validity of the Noldorin crown, then I do not see how the people of Harlindon can be of any assistance to you. Pray send for me when – or, I suppose, _if_ – progress is actually made.”

And with that, the Harbormaster turned and simply walked from the tent.

A stunned silence followed him out, but it did not last long. Oropher coughed, a speculative look in his eye, and there were murmurs among the eastern leaders as they seemed to consider following suit.

It was not difficult to discern the turning mood: if the Noldor were crossing the Hithaeglir just to re-ignite one of their infamous feuds, then surely this in-fighting would prevent their being the ones to defeat the Dark Lord of Mordor. Elrond could all but _see_ this realization spreading among Ereinion’s would-be allies, these critical “chaps from the east,” and by Ereinion’s muttered imprecation, he was realizing the same.

And across from Ereinion, Artanis – smiled.

Oh, Elrond realized – _Valar_. In stirring up dissent against the High King, Artanis would position herself as the strong leader he was not, and wrangle the trust of the eastern leaders for herself.

“No,” Erestor suddenly murmured. “No, no – this will not happen again, not upon account of my silence. Majesties!” Only the last word rose above a whisper, but the rustlings around Ereinion’s table subsided a little at the surprise of hearing a new voice project into the debate. “Perhaps you have heard of the Hidden Rock – the fallen city of Gondolin?”

Elrond froze, and saw that Ereinion, in his place slightly further up the table, stilled likewise.

For all that Erestor could become sharp and incisive as a razor, he turned this ability upon himself as often as upon others. And if he was finally going to tell this particular story before such a large and insensible audience – and Valar, before Artanis, who had never yet been able to pry it from him – then Elrond recognized this as a major sacrifice upon his uncle’s part.  

He felt a great swell of pride and gratitude and concern for his older kinsman.

 “I have heard of it,” Amdír conceded, brows furrowing as he dredged up whatever whispers of the Fallen Rock might be known among the Sindar. Oropher merely snorted, and Ímundur said nothing, but Erestor took the single concession as reason enough to continue.

And of course Artanis, her eyes trained upon Erestor even as he would not meet hers, listened with rapt attention and growing triumph as she realized which rumors he might finally be confirming.

 “Well, then,” Erestor said briskly, looking not to Artanis but at the rest of the table. “If you know of Gondolin, Majesties and honored guests, then perhaps you also know that its chief was Turgon, next brother of Fingon, he who was king and foster-father of our Ereinion. Had Fingon no issue or successor, the kingship of our people would have fallen to Turgon and his, for he had more than one heir: his daughter, Idril, was first in line, and his foster-son, Maeglin, was second. Then, when Idril wed, and bore a child, that child too would have joined the ruling line of Gondolin.”

“Eärendil,” Amdír hazarded, but Erestor waved him to silence.

“Now,” Elrond’s uncle continued, “most of the citizens of that great city perished by Morgoth’s devices. Few escaped; fewer still live to this day. But to the outside world, it was rumored that Idril had wed not once, but twice, and what is more, had borne to each of her lovers a son. To Tuor, Man of the House of Hador – yes, Majesty, she bore Eärendil, by whose devices was secured the aid of the Powers in the Great War. And to Maeglin, son of Aredhel, it is said,” the hitch in Erestor’s voice would not be audible to any who did not know him well – “that Idril bore another son, the elder of the two.”

To the rulers of the east, Erestor surely appeared calm, aloof, in control. Elrond, though, could see the fractures that came of retelling this particular history – he himself had only heard parts of it, and only ever rarely.

“Rumors, of course,” Artanis said, slowly, apprising Erestor with a new eye.

“Of course,” Erestor agreed neutrally.

“And yet,” Amdír mused, chiming in: “if such rumors were true, then – then this child would have been crown prince. And he would have a better claim to the kingship of the entire people than a mere ward of the other brother.”

The king of Laurelindórenan didn’t say _bastard_ , didn’t say _son of a camp follower_ , but the table’s collective silence and various shifting in seats said it for him. At this point, those rumors had followed Ereinion for centuries.

“Woodsman _save_ us, get to the _point_ ,” Oropher complained, but Artanis’s eyes were alight, and even Ímundur seemed cautiously interested. Amdír pushed on.

 “This child,” the chief of the Galadhrim said, still musing: “– did he exist, of course – would there have been some reason he was deemed unfit for the kingship?”

“It is difficult to say, as either he never existed or else he perished in the flight from that doomed city,” Erestor said languidly. “A sharp mind might conjure all manner of likely obstacles, though. He would be the son of the greatest traitor the Noldor had ever known, for one, and product of a union that many beyond the gated city would have decried, at that. For another, anyone with a critical eye could see that he would not have done his part to prevent Gondolin’s fall, or to take up leadership in Sirion – and of course, the death of Maeglin at the hand of his metamour reflected ill upon all of that line, save Eärendil, who redeemed himself and his sons with his life.”

Elrond’s heart ached for his uncle. It never grew easier to hear him voice such beliefs, but Erestor would not be swayed from them for anything that could be said.

“And even had this supposed son lived, and stepped forward, nothing more could have come of it than a schism among his people,” Erestor concluded. “For by the time that Sirion fell, Ereinion ward of Fingon had already been elevated, and any claim to the crown would have been a claim against him.” 

Artanis, Elrond could see, was already tracing the ways in which she might leverage this information. Amdír, though, leaned back and glanced unsubtly to Ereinion, who sat stiff and clenched as if carved of stone.

Oropher yawned. Ímundur crossed his arms.

“And this fairy-tale of lost princes is of use to us present because?” the Khazad prompted.

“Because,” Erestor returned, stressing the word. “Because, Master Khazad, I hope that it serves to demonstrate – to _any_ who might question it – how staunchly we, the Noldor, stand united behind our High King. For although such a prince might have existed, we neither sought him out nor ever wanted him, for Ereinion had been raised to serve us, and – regardless of how close by blood he may or may not be to the departed King Findekáno – he has always served us well.”

Only he, Elrond prayed, was close enough to said High King of all the Noldor in Middle-earth to hear Ereinion’s muffled but heartfelt, “ _Fuck_.”

And of course, this was when Artanis must needs speak again. “A pretty story, Erestor, and one that I am sure would be of interest to Forlindon’s archivists, who I am surprised to learn do not know of its claims! It will make for an interesting addition to the histories, I am sure.” Erestor, Elrond saw, gave a minute wince at the implication that Artanis would cross-check and then share his story, which he had long worked so hard to keep stifled. “And yet. I still do not see how it proves Ereinion the right and proper king whose leadership we should accept.”

Erestor, though, only tended to grow colder and deadlier still when further provoked. “Interesting then, Lady, that you are so keen to uphold the line of Nolofinwë when the crown only passed to them through Himring’s abdication.” Erestor’s experience of Sirion, something even Elrond neither knew nor remembered the full extent of, meant that Erestor would never say Maedhros’s name if he could help it. “Does not the very line then prove the legitimacy of a king’s selection? The King may name his successor, just as Findekáno saw fit to choose and name Ereinion. How does it fall to you to question the fitness of that choice?”

“Even if, for all we know, he is simply the son of a whore who caught my dear departed cousin’s eye?” Artanis asked, as if genuinely curious whether there were to be lawful exceptions.

“Even if so, Lady, for all that you _do_ like to contradict your own stories of the former High King Findekáno and his – abilities,” Erestor acknowledged silkily, dangerously. “And yet. Consider where Ereinion’s contenders stand. Whom better would we follow? Celebrimbor Curufinwion? Dead at Sauron’s hand, as is perhaps for the best. The lost prince of this foolish tale? Even if he existed, then surely he died protecting Elwing Foamwhite and her sons in Sirion, as was his duty.” Erestor’s anger at Thirist, his loathing of himself, his scorn for Artanis, shone through in every word he spat. “Or perhaps the alternative most fit is you, Lady Artanis, scion of Arafinwë – and machinator of the downfall of Ost-in-Edhil?”

Artanis was too experienced, too canny, to blanch at the accusation, but a slight flare of her nose acknowledged the hit. Erestor had laid it on a bit thick perhaps – Artanis was nowhere near the only one responsible for that city’s destruction – but her flight thence to Laurelindórenan certainly seemed to speak to the existence of deeds she would wish forgotten.

And now, praise the Valar, Amdír was regarding her with even more trepidation than before. Good – let him remember that he was actually the ruler of Laurelindórenan, and pass the warning along to his son, if Amroth was to serve as his regent!

Erestor had never looked more the part of a prince to Elrond’s eyes as the older elf surveyed his listeners, letting the dismissal sink in a moment longer as he met each dissenter’s gaze. Then, this survey completed, he spoke again in a tone of finality. “Given these options as well as Findekáno’s sovereignty to elevate as he chose, our choice seems clear enough – at least, to me. Hear I any more dissent?”

None of the eastern kings seemed prepared to stir and risk catching his eye. And even Artanis. . .

“The choice seems clear,” she repeated, slowly. But then –

_Oh Valar why_

– it was _Elrond_ she then turned to face.

“Why is not the son of Eärendil acclaimed our king?” Artanis asked softly, a tone calculated to hush any possible dissent if only so that its speakers were able to hear her. Thus assured of a full audience for this latest claim, she went on: “He is truly of the proper line, and at his age we cannot dismiss him out of fear for _possible_ complicity in the fall of Gondolin, _possible_ descent of a doomed union. Moreover, is he not of a lineage that could unite _all_ the free peoples beneath one banner – Noldor, Sindar, and Edain? Does it not seem strange to any of you that the son of the Mariner, our savior during the Great War, is a mere standard-bearer in this one? Surely even you, Ereinion, and you, Erestor, could not argue that Lord Eärendilion would be excellently suited to the task of leading our line in these dark days?”   

It was a masterful sally. In a single swoop Artanis had reaffirmed her doubt about Erestor’s story, acknowledged the eastern kings’ fears about uniting behind a Noldorin banner, equated the squabbling peoples thus gathered as joint participants in a great enterprise, and appealed to their memories of the Great War, so hard-fought and so much harder-won.

All of this, under the guise of honoring Eärendil the Mariner, and all of this, also calculated to hit Erestor, who had just outflanked her, where it would hurt him most if he truly was the lost prince of Gondolin.  

And indeed, Erestor’s confident princeliness had vanished at the dig, his nails now all but scoring grooves into the table beneath his hands.

Artanis leaned forward, brow wrinkling as if with concern that her legitimate fears would be brushed aside, but Elrond could not miss the gleam of triumph in her eyes. “Well, Lord Eärendilion?”

He – Valar, he would take no more of this.

The rasp of his chair against the hard ground was the only sound in the tent as he stood.

“Lady Artanis.” Some odd strength came to him, came over him, as Elrond walked away from his place at the table. Was this how it felt, he wondered from a distance, to know that you were doomed for something greater than yourself? Oddly enough, it was Thirist who came to mind as he did so. “Your concern for our victory is inspiring, and I am humbled by the strength of the conviction you place in me.”

As if in a daze, Elrond stopped behind Ereinion – who, along with everyone else, had been following his movements with curious eyes, and who now turned in his seat to stare up at Elrond as if he had never seen him before.

 Elrond could not let the wonder in that gaze distract him. So he looked straight ahead, at Artanis, as he placed his left hand upon Ereinion’s right shoulder. “Given that conviction, Lady, I am delighted that I might direct it to its fit place, which is with Ereinion.”

He knew he must be imagining the shudder that ran through the High King at his feather-light touch. But he could not falter now, with the eyes of all the rulers and decision-makers of the east of Middle-earth upon him.  “For by right and by choice, Gil-Galad Rodnor Ereinion is High King of the Noldor in Middle-earth. He is a hero of the Great War and a champion of our people, and one whom I am proud to hold as my liege and my lord. I am not our king, nor would I ever seek to stand in his place. I am pledged to his service, Lady Artanis, and thus your support for me is support of him.” 

Hopefully, his audience would overlook the break in his voice upon the last words, but – for all that these were the truths of Elrond’s life and his service, they also cut far too close for comfort to the deeper truth of his heart.

But –

Void, Artanis still had more she would say?

“I-“ But she was just drawing breath to continue when her daughter, of all people, stepped in.

“Mother,” Artaniel said, from her place beside Ereinion. Elrond, still in place at Ereinion’s back with his hand to the High King’s shoulder, felt a white-hot pang at the way Artaniel reached out to clasp Ereinion’s hand as she spoke. “Mother, please. Ereinion is king. Let us not squabble on this point, well-worn as it is, when we have so much greater work to complete.”

Artanis initially looked as though she would continue the argument, and with her daughter this time, but Elrond, watching, _saw_ the moment when this purpose disappeared. Was – was Artaniel using the Sight to communicate with her mother?

But whatever had been done, Artanis leaned back, as if satisfied with her daughter’s testimony where she had not been with anything else. “Be it as you say, hên. Lord Eärendilion, your abdication of your right is admirable, if also concerning in its gallantry, but I see that I must follow as you direct.”

Elrond watched, heart constricting, as Artaniel pressed Ereinion’s hand, and – and Ereinion pressed back.

Then, with one last squeeze, Ereinion withdrew, and stood. Elrond was forced to remove his own hand, much as Artaniel had withdrawn hers.

“Well!” In the somewhat awkward silence that followed, Ereinion clapped his hands and rubbed them together, as if for warmth. “If we’ve established to everyone’s satisfaction that I might be a bastard and that I might also be capable of leading this mad venture, can we please, _please_ move on to something a little more productive than going round and round the same two points? Yes? Yes? Bless you, Elendil, you saved us the cider?”

 

~ ~ ~

“ _Fuck_ ,” Ereinion groaned, when finally they were left alone again, the eastern rulers dispersing to mull over the planned campaign and their own parts in it. “I’m telling you, El, I’m not going to survive this. . .”

But Elrond ignored the High King of all the Noldor in Middle-earth in favor of catching at his uncle’s sleeve as Erestor made to slip from the tent himself. “Erestor – thank you.”

 _That could not have been easy,_ he did not say. Or else _I am sorry for all that you lost, and for how you still hold it all to be your fault_.

“What do you want me to say, Elrond, that it was the least I could do?” Erestor snapped, his voice unusually thick and ragged. But it was his uncle’s way to lash out when wounded, even against those he would most regret hurting later on, so Elrond held his peace and simply pulled at his arm, trying to reel him in for an embrace.  

But Erestor would not unbend, would not submit. Instead, he pulled away, hurrying from the tent to – to what? To grieve, to curse, to cry, in peace?

Elrond had never been able to follow him and find out. All he could ever do was watch Erestor leave.

“Damned brave of him to speak up,” Ereinion said behind him, suddenly serious. “Knew he wouldn’t appreciate my saying so, of course, but – fuck, El, I hate hearing him cut himself up like that, I really do. Artanis isn’t going to let a history of that magnitude just go either, is she? Fuck. Speaking of – El. El! We need to get that Ring back, don’t we.”

“I’m afraid we do,” Elrond said grimly.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Ereinion said, with great feeling. “ ‘Rian, my treasure? Is there any way I might persuade you to try your hand with your mother? Any favor or position you like, it’s yours, if you please just work your magic on her so I don’t have to go dig up Thirist and his creepy face. Please? Please?”

“It’s the language, I think, that makes them so sure you’re not truly Fingon’s son,” Artaniel said dryly, and –

Oh, Valar. Surely that wasn’t what Ereinion had meant, even in jest? But. . .

“Got it in one, my dear,” Ereinion sighed. He had finally succumbed to the desire to fold his arms across the table and bury his face in them. “But really, if Amdír gets word that I’m favoring Artanis with a personal visit but not him, that’s Laurelindórenan lost for sure, and no one else will stick around if he can’t tough it out. Fuck. ‘Rian, please? I saw you get her off my ass earlier, I know you can do it. . .”

“You know I will try,” Artaniel said, sighing. “But Ereinion –“

Elrond noticed that she was looking at him, now, with some trepidation.

What had Elrond to do with anything?

Whatever her compunction, though, Artaniel roused herself enough to shake it off. “Ereinion, am I to assume that we are still keeping the knowledge of Thirist-“ still she stumbled over her uncle’s new name – “from circulating?”

“Powers, yes,” Ereinion groaned into his arms. “Can you just imagine the fucking commotion Artanis could raise over that alone? I’m not telling anyone until I have all his damn Rings back for him, and we’re close enough to Mordor that we can point any nervous energy in the right fucking direction.”

“Right.” Artaniel bestirred herself and stood. “The payoff may be that I reveal something of our relations to her, then. As a smokescreen.”

“Oh, for crying – no, you know what? Go for it. I didn’t want to live forever anyway.” Ereinion gave a mock growl when Artaniel ran her fingers through his hair in parting. “Ugh, wench, go away, I’m busy dying here.” 

“Such language,” Artaniel rebuked him again, but she stopped at Elrond’s side as she made to leave. “Lord Eärendilion?” she asked quietly, low enough that Ereinion seemed not to hear her.  

Elrond, who had frozen in something like shock to see how their banter had grown even easier and more familiar since wintering in Imladris, could barely bestir himself to answer her in the same register. “Lady – Lady Artaniel?”

She was looking at him so seriously. “Might I request a moment of your time, when I return? It is – it is a matter of some urgency.”

“Of – of course?” What else was he to say to her? “I am at your disposal.”

He would have liked to know more, of course, but by the time she had secured his accession Artaniel was already gone.

 

~ ~ ~

When Artaniel was finally shown to his tent in the Imladrian encampment later that night, though, she seemed agitated and strangely hesitant to actually speak.

“I can leave,” Erestor offered, reluctantly. Elrond had left Ereinion’s grand council-tent to find his uncle already awaiting him in his, recollected of all his usual poise and full of apologies for having snapped at Elrond – as if a few sharp words could truly be weighed against having relived such a harrowing tale.

 “No,” Artaniel said, hastily, but still she did not take the seat that Elrond had offered her upon her arrival. “By your kinship to Lord Eärendilion you are already involved, Master Seneschal, and I would have your new-revealed wisdom in this besides.”

Erestor resumed his own seat as bidden, but not without a frown. “Such cryptic statements are not best calculated to foster my confidence, Lady.”

“You assume a great deal in imagining that I came seeking _confidences_ ,” she snapped, but with less actual heat than the words themselves suggested.

It had been a long day already with machinations aplenty, and all Elrond wanted was to shoo these intruders from his tent that he might rest for a few hours before facing the chaos again anew tomorrow.

“Lady Artaniel.” Sometimes it was best to throw one’s self into the fray, was it not? “Forgive my abruptness, but the hour grows late, and it would be unseemly for the High King’s betrothed to linger over-long in another’s tent. You mentioned that you wished to speak with me?”

And Artaniel – flinched.

What in all the nine voids. . .

“I find myself with no easy way to say this, then,” she said, softly. “Lord Eärendilion, I am with child.”

He was standing almost before he knew what his body was doing. The tent walls were closing in upon him, the very air stifling in his lungs.

Ereinion had bedded her.

 “Felicitations upon the happy occasion, Lady,” Erestor was saying, somewhere beyond Elrond’s misbehaving vision. “It _is_ Ereinion’s get?”

Ereinion had consummated their unofficial marriage. Surely they were bound, now.

“Who else’s?” Artaniel’s laughter was wild, and rang in Elrond’s ears. “Surely though, Master Seneschal, you can see why I must have advice on the matter.”

Gods, Ereinion was – no, he had been beyond Elrond’s reach for a long time now, but _Valar_ , hearing the confirmation of it was a knife twisted within the very chambers of his heart.

“Artanis.” Erestor sighed.

Elrond needed a seat.

“My mother,” Artaniel agreed. “I care for her dearly, but we have all been reminded again where her stakes in this matter lie. Were she to discover that she has had a hand in producing an heir to the throne of the Noldor-“

Just to steady his legs, just for a moment.

“It will be far more difficult to keep her from meddling with Forlindon,” Erestor finished, grimly. “You will not be able to continue all the way to Mordor-“

“Say rather that I am able, but _will not_ continue all the way to Mordor, or put the babe through such an ordeal,” Artaniel returned. “But to return to Laurelindórenan-”

It was remarkable how well they got along, without Elrond standing in their way.

“Will be to give her just that leverage we cannot afford,” Erestor realized, grimmer still. “You came to beg sanctuary of my nephew.”

Why, he had even grouped them, erstwhile rivals, together: _we_!

Elrond needed to sit, and the floor was close enough to serve.  

“Elrond!” Dammit, Erestor, could he not have a moment’s peace. . . “Elrond! Are you ill?”

A cup was pressed to his lips: water, cold and clear. Fingers pressed to his brow; above him somewhere, Erestor exclaimed in wordless vexation.

“I am sorry, Lord Eärendilion,” Artaniel murmured, rather closer at hand than Elrond would have liked, right at this moment. “I – I knew the news might be difficult for you, but I seem to have underestimated just how much.”

“There is nothing to apologize for, Lady,” Elrond whispered: she had done nothing wrong. It seemed expedient to close his eyes, and so he did. “It is – a moment’s surprise, nothing more. It will pass.”

What else, there was something else – oh. “Allow me to join my uncle in congratulating you upon the news of your conception.”

Dammit but Ereinion had been right, in that shining long-ago when he’d cheerfully accused Elrond of growing more stilted even as he grew more uncomfortable. Any mother-to-be would surely take offense at Elrond’s lackluster wish.

 _Any one other than this,_ a traitorous thought supplied, _deft with counsel as she is with bow and blade_! Artaniel had known there was no intent to wound, and thus no need to be wounded.

Her fingers upon his brow were light and soothing, and Elrond felt the oddest urge to surge up into them.

“Elrond, dearheart, you need to stand. Take my hand – there you go – here, come with me.” He was helped to stand, and to take a proper seat, and wasn’t _that_ embarrassing, that he required the aid.

When Elrond had been settled to his satisfaction, Erestor resumed his interrogation, pacing. “I hope that you will forgive my candidness, Lady, if I admit that I am slightly surprised.”

Artaniel laughed again, but exhaustion crept into the sound, as did something suspiciously like tears. “Because you thought we were friends rather than lovers? Or because you thought we would never progress beyond a betrothal for form’s sake, or bedding in anticipation of hard times ahead? Your care for your nephew has blinded you to a great many things, Master Seneschal.”

Erestor’s sudden silence was confirmation enough in itself.

“And yet,” Artaniel said bitterly. “Friendship and respect, Master Seneschal – can you truly claim that there are better foundations from which to build? No, I may not have entered into this as more than a ruse to deflect my mother, or with any feelings greater than those of camaraderie and a sense of shared purpose, but – I find that I have gained so much more than these, this year past.”

“You love him.” He had to be the one who said it, Elrond found – he could not bear to hear the words from either Artaniel or Erestor.

“I do,” Artaniel confirmed, softly. “I did not think to, but I do.”

“Of course.” There was nothing more to be said, for how could anyone not grow to love the High King?

“Oh, dearheart. . .” Erestor whispered.

He did not want to hear condolences, Elrond found, from either of them. By her admittance, Artaniel had realized the tremendous worth and value of the bond she had been given, and that was all Elrond could ask for Ereinion.

 “My uncle is wise, and he will be able to advise you.” He made as if to stand, only to find that his legs would not support him. He tried again. “Please-“ He almost did not know what he was asking. “I pray that you can excuse me, I. . . I find that I need some air.”

He had to stand, now. He had been seated quite long enough.

But Artaniel’s hand rose to catch at his own. “Please, Lord Eärendilion – do not go, not yet. I – I came to you this night for your aid as much as to your uncle for his wisdom, vast as it is.”

He was so tired. “You need but ask, Lady Artaniel, and whatever you want or need is yours, to the best of my power. Erestor will arrange anything that is needed.”

Beneath hers, his hand was shaking.

“I would ask your permission to abide in Imladris until the babe is born,” Artaniel began, and raised her hand for his silence in a gesture eerily reminiscent of Ereinion’s when Elrond would have cut her off there. “Peace, Lord Eärendilion, peace – I have not finished.”

He subsided.

“The babe is male,” she continued, “and he will have his father’s coloring, not mine,” and that was all it took for Elrond to see what she must intend.

By birth alone, a male child would already be more aligned with the history and tradition of the Noldorin kingship than a female, and so Artaniel’s babe would be doubly marked as Ereinion’s successor.

She must want him to claim the child. To protect the little one from the pressures of being marked for the kingship, with his father at war in the south, and every possibility that – Powers save them, every possibility that the Last Alliance would never return.

“No. . .” Valar, it was a noble impulse, but Elrond would not be party to deceiving Ereinion in such a cruel fashion. “Lady, the sanctuary of Imladris is yours, but I – I cannot claim the child.”

Valar be praised, Artaniel only nodded. “It would be easiest that way, but – oh, Lord Eärendilion, I bless your resolve, for I do not know if I could have dealt so hard by Ereinion either.” Her breath hitched, as with a sob restrained.

“Unless.” He would do anything necessary, Elrond vowed, so long as Ereinion were not harmed or deceived by it, Elrond’s own traitorous heart be damned. “Would it work were we to tell him of the deception and its necessity to protect the babe? Then you might oversee Imladris as my wife-“

Artaniel was laughing.

Why was she laughing, was she laughing at him, could she not see how difficult this was for him. . .

But something of this turmoil must have shown on his face, for with one last chuckle Artaniel reached for his hands again, and Elrond was too surprised by the unexpected move to prevent her.

“Oh, but your face as you named me ‘wife,’ Lord Eärendilion,” she said, still somewhat breathless. “But you have soothed the last of my unfounded fears, and I should have trusted you from the first – please, forgive a jealous heart its final silly misgivings. For there is another way.”

What – what was she saying?

Somewhere behind Elrond, Erestor released a sound as if he had been kicked in the gut.

Artaniel ignored him. “A smaller deception, then, Lord Eärendilion. Will you claim the child, as the third member of our bond?”

She – he – _what_?

“I would not be standing here at all if not for the nerve you have given me today, both of you,” Artaniel said absently, never looking away from Elrond’s face. “Master Seneschal, your tale, and your resolution in sharing it – ai, Elbereth, I cannot thank you enough for giving me the courage to think that it could be done! And you, Lord Eärendilion, in the selflessness I have seen of you since we first met, dealing with Ereinion day after day with not a whisper of how greatly his nearness, or mine, must have pained you – my lord, I do not know if I could have done as you have.”

_He did not understand he could not think he could not breathe_

“And it is in this that you would have my wisdom then, Lady,” Erestor predicted, still somewhere at Elrond’s back. His hands, warm and grounding, descended upon Elrond’s shoulders even as Elrond wondered, distantly, whether the spots in his vision were a Mannish remainder or a mark of impending death. “Breathe, dearheart. Breathe.”

He drew in so great a lungful that he nearly choked.

“Getting there,” Erestor said fondly, but he relinquished his hold and came to stand between them – Elrond where he sat and shook, Artaniel where she stood so strong and steady – and addressed Artaniel. “Lady. This is not. . . this will not be easy for me to recount, and you will have heard that the bond in question was not mine, but – my parents’.”

Artaniel only nodded.

“Knowing this, you would still have my advice?”

“I would,” she said. She never let go Elrond’s hands, and Elrond’s hands never stopped shaking.

“Then the one thing, the most important thing I can tell you with all a kinsman’s overjoyed heart, is that you must not do this,” Erestor said softly. “This sharing between two, and not three, is precisely what nearly tore us apart at the first. My-“ Erestor’s voice hitched in turn “my first-father thought he was to be put aside for Tuor, and because he loved my mother, he went without a murmur. Happily, it turned out that the Man did not understand any need for such a displacement and, for all his hard life, had not a jealous bone in his body. But had Tuor not come to Lómion and spoken with him upon learning of it, then the misunderstanding that my mother had cast Lómion aside would have persisted, and – their bond would have died.”

And for all that he did not speak of how their later lack of speech had then doomed his fathers, there was no need to – sometimes it seemed as though the tale of Maeglin’s fall with Tuor’s sword at his throat was the only one that had survived the fall of Gondolin.

But Elrond could hardly spare a thought even for this amidst the whirlwind of all that Artaniel was proposing.

“If you are to succeed in this, Artaniel, then do not let anything, _anything_ , stand in the way of your speaking as equals, all three of you,” Erestor continued, almost harsh in his vehemence. “In this, for instance – this is no small decision that you are proposing to make without him. Does Ereinion know that he is to have a babe? Does he know that you two are to be joined by my nephew?”

_Artaniel was proposing that Elrond enter the bond with Ereinion_

“No, and no,” Artaniel whispered. “And I am certain you know that, Master Seneschal, but – thank you for impressing the severity of the omission upon me, all the same.”

Elrond had never seen his uncle, who now bit at his own lip, quite so close to tears. “Upon both of you, Artaniel – both of you. Elrond, dearheart – I am so happy for you.”

Even as he finally, finally met Artaniel’s eyes, Elrond was still near unable to process his uncle’s whispered words of joy.

This could not be real, could not actually be happening.

Could it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) please remind me that I never want to write another conversation with that many speaking characters ever again, gods  
> 2) I left the poly tag off deliberately for this update - didn't want to tease for El/Gil/Rian quiiiiite yet when what it would mean here was Idril/Maeglin/Tuor  
> 3) everyone who's been asking about Erestor, I've been dying to tell you this stuff and my tongue is half bitten-off at this point  
> 4) Erestor switches between Sindarin and Quenyan names on purpose - when introducing the line of Gondolin, he uses the names he imagines everyone will know, and then when he starts defending them or speaking of them in private, he uses the names he was more familiar with. jsyk. . . 
> 
> oh, and also  
> 5) ERESTOR SHIPS THEM AS MUCH AS I DO

**Author's Note:**

> series, fic, and chapter titles all from Jack Off Jill's Strawberry Gashes ([link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqjGNacXL9U))


End file.
